Tree Acquisition Complete

Yesterday, Saturday December 1st, was the dedicated day for our yearly trek to the NC mountains to get ourselves a Christmas tree. A forecast high of 53 and a low of 33 were in store for us; not too shabby at all. The usual spot we drive to in Boone, NC sent us a card earlier this year stating that they would if fact NOT be open for business this season. They were taking a year off to allow their trees to grow a bit more due to brisk sales in previous seasons and also this dastardly drought that has hit the state so hard. So where shall we go in 2007?

A quick internet search of tree farms in Watauga County resulted in quite a number of possibilities, but this one won out due to the fact that they had a "tree shaker" to get excess needles, leaves, and critters out of the tree. It is further west than we normally go, virtually on the Tennessee border, but hey, let's give it a shot.

We begin the day by sleeping in a little bit, then hit the road by 11am. A gripping episode of the NPR news quiz "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" brings us to noon and the beginnings of the end of WFDD's range. So Christmas CD's fit the bill for the remainder of the trip: The Rat Pack, Dean Martin, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Barenaked Ladies will do nicely.


We arrive at 1:30pm and sadly, unlike our usual J&D Tree Farm, there is barely any 4-wheeling to be had for the Cherokee. Chris is crushed. No mud puddles, no steep inclines, no dangerous switchbacks, nuthin'. After a brief introduction by the proprietor and a friendly pet of the resident canine, we bypass the hayride to go walking up the path ourselves to the fields. (Sharing the wagon with a VERY pregnant and uncomfortable woman plus three children all under the age of 5 made it an easy decision to just walk.) Frasier Fir and Canadian Fir were our choices. With Frasiers being a relative House of Gordon constant, we opted for something new with the fatter and squatter Canadian Fir. And with barely any hunting, we find the winner:
We summon one of the friendly boys who wears overalls and drives an ATV to cut it down and load it onto their trailer to take back. We then hoof it back to the entrance. For the first year in quite a while, neither one of us trips, falls, or comes back muddy. Truly a Christmas miracle.

We get back to the beginning of the trail. They shake the tree, bail it, and tie it to the Jeep:









$55 and a $5 donation later, it's time to make our way back into Boone for the feast that will be our meal for the day. Yes, by now it's after 3pm and we haven't eaten yet. But that's OK, we need the room for a colossal family-style lunch served at The Dan'l Boone Inn: If it's a mountain trip for pumpkins, or one for apples, or one for a Christmas tree, there is always a stop at The Dan'l Boone Inn for more food than we could ever need. Vegetable soup, country ham biscuits, salisbury steak, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, cinnamon apples, and your choice of strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler, or chocolate cake. Wow.

After engorging ourselves, we fight some heavy traffic (the Appalachian State football playoff game crowd had let out) and drive a few miles to Blowing Rock and browse the shops there. It's a quaint downtown with plenty to see: niche stores, artsy fartsy boutiques, and plenty of dog walkers. We have some walking to do ourselves to work off our enormous lunch in order to fulfill another House of Gordon tradition: ice cream at Kilwin's:Absolutely gluttonous. We're so boring and predictable when we come here: chocolate peanut butter in a sugar cone for Kimberly, mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone for Chris. Redundant, yet delicious. We finish off our Kilwin's visit with a few dense blocks of fudge (freshly made on those marble slabs before our eyes) that make their way home with us. One of our usual stops in Blowing Rock is an awesome shop called neaco where we made an impulse buy of a CD entitled The Mistletoe Lounge which sets holiday standards to electronica and dance music. Freaky. It was playing in the store and "spoke to us". It made for a nice drive home in the dark listening to it.

It's late in the evening when we finally pull into Greensboro, and we've had a full day. But before bedtime, we open the tree up in the garage to allow the branches to fall...and to allow any insects or critters that may have survived the shaking and the bailing to exit the tree and therefore not enter our living room:Late Sunday afternoon after the Browns lose to the Cardinals (seriously, are you kidding me?) we call the neighbors and ask to borrow their chainsaw...because Chris cutting through a morbidly obese trunk with his bow saw just wasn't going to get it done by Christmas. We trim the lowest branches, make that fresh bottom cut to open up that xylem and phloem (go look it up) and our 2007 Gordon Christmas Tree makes its entrance into the living room: It's such a wonderfully delightfully fat tree. Well, Chris thinks so. Kimberly is still coming around to having a fat tree. She's more of a "height" girl. At any rate, we have our tree and the house smells just GREAT!