I saw that The Land Between the Lakes (LBL) issues free permits to cut down a Christmas tree. My girlfriend and I thought this might be a cool tradition to start since this is our first Christmas together. I tried to prepare her for an ugly tree since LBL allows you to cut only cedar trees 10 foot tall or less, and tried to focus on the adventure aspect. When I was a really little kid, my dad packed us up and took us out there to hunt down a tree and we all remember it as adults and always makes for a good story looking back. Weather looked good for saturday after a few days of rain so I knew it'd be muddy, but I packed up some saws and a tarp and off we went. We started off on the northern side since we live closer to it, and we expected it to take us a long time to hunt down the perfect tree. Little did we know that once we got to looking, there wasn't much to choose from. There's lots of cedar trees but most of them were too tall, or very scrawny and missing branches on half of the tree. We drove down some muddy, gravel forest service roads on the hunt, and when we saw enought green, we'd stop and go tromping through the woods to get a closer look. Do y'all know what thes clothes pins clipped to branches mean? We saw lots of them out in one area.
We also stumbled upon the remains of an old car or truck out in the woods.
Anyways, after a couple hours of looking, we drove right up to our Christmas tree.
Amanda and Lucy shown for scale.
Time to get to work on this tree. Not much work though, the saw went through it like a hot knife through butter.
Not much help was given from Lucy.
Packed up, and ready to roll out. We had to go down a muddy hill to get turned around, which was stupid since I didn't have a winch or anyone to pull me out if I got stuck. Going back out required 4lo, a locked rear diff and a little tire spin but we got it.
Better pull over to double check the tie downs.
It was way too tall so I cut a few feet off the bottom, packed it in, strung it with some lights and new ornaments and we're done! It MIGHT look better than Charlie Brown's tree, but then again it might not...
That's ok, the adventure was fun and totally worth having an ugly Christmas tree.
Hopefully this isn't the last tree we go on the hunt for!
We also stumbled upon the remains of an old car or truck out in the woods.
Anyways, after a couple hours of looking, we drove right up to our Christmas tree.
Amanda and Lucy shown for scale.
Time to get to work on this tree. Not much work though, the saw went through it like a hot knife through butter.
Not much help was given from Lucy.
Packed up, and ready to roll out. We had to go down a muddy hill to get turned around, which was stupid since I didn't have a winch or anyone to pull me out if I got stuck. Going back out required 4lo, a locked rear diff and a little tire spin but we got it.
Better pull over to double check the tie downs.
It was way too tall so I cut a few feet off the bottom, packed it in, strung it with some lights and new ornaments and we're done! It MIGHT look better than Charlie Brown's tree, but then again it might not...
That's ok, the adventure was fun and totally worth having an ugly Christmas tree.
Hopefully this isn't the last tree we go on the hunt for!
