Always an Adventure!

We went and got our Christmas Tree the day after Thanksgiving. Last year we went up to Fall Creek by Palisades. This year Mac was out hunting up past Mud Lake and said he saw a bunch of good Christmas trees. Mac's sister and her family wanted to go cut a tree down too so we all went together. Mac had a general idea of where we were going. He had been hunting at Deer Canyon and we found it on his atlas. There was a gravel road on the map that went from the highway straight to Deer Canyon. So we jump in the car and take off. It is a little over an hour drive to get where we were headed. We know the general area, we go camping there every year. So we take the whole family including the dogs. We drive straight there, just past the gravel pit is a gravel road. This road is a faint and in ill repair but it is there none the less. So we turn off the main road and head out across the sage brush. The road is bumpy and rutted. We crawl along at an average pace of 7 to 12 miles per hour. After driving for about 30 mins I tell Mac I'm surprised that we haven't come to the creek yet. He says, "What creek?" I tell him Birch creek runs on this side of the highway until after the campground. We camp and fish on the creek. I tell him the map shows the road crossing the creek. About five minutes later we come to the creek. There is no bridge the road just goes straight through. Mac and his sister's husband get out and asses the situation. After careful consideration (okay more like 4.3 seconds of discussion) they decide we just bomb through it. I got out and snapped a picture first. It was a lovely snow scene.

So onward with our adventure and we bomb through. Really no harm done the bank of the creek was a little steep. I think Mac's sister's truck dipped into the creek before the tires got to the bottom of the bank. So we are off again. Suddenly right before us the expanse of open sagebrush ends abruptly at a paved road marked highway 22. Mac looks at me and says "Is this highway on the map." Well as a some what competent navigator "I say yep it's right here. The road crosses it." In theory the road crossed the highway, at least on the map it did. But it reality the road simply ended. So we have now spent 50 minutes driving on a jarring dirt path to come out on a highway that connects us back to the highway we turned off of. So we head back to the highway and in 5 mins back track what took us almost an hour.

Mac knows they turned off onto a better road and then drove along side the mountain for a while but it was five am when he came and he wasn't driving. So we head up the highway and sure enough come to a road sign that lists, Big Dry Canyon, Byington Canyon, and Deer Canyon. We decide we should probably turn here. This is another gravel road and smoother than the first but still quite bumpy. So we are flying down this road at 15 to 20 miles per hour and suddenly Penny, our dog, gets car sick and just starts throwing up. Fantastic! We are in Mac's truck he does not have a stash of restaurant napkins collected in his glove box like I do in my van. He does have about a fourth of a roll of toilet paper. I used the entire roll to clean up all three piles of the doggy puke. YUCK! About this same time Mac's low fuel light comes on. I ask him so how many miles can you go when your low light comes on. He is very reassuring and tells me that "he doesn't know he always fills up about 30 miles after his light comes on, but I guess we'll find out!"

By this time it is about an hour away from being dark, our low fuel light is on, we have yet to reach the base of the mountain or even see a tree that isn't sagebrush. We finally reach the mountain. It is not Deer Canyon but we have about 30 mins before it is dark. We park the car and jump out. Up the side of the hill we trudge to see if we can find a tree. My four year old niece tells her mom she wants the forty foot tall pine tree. We look around and I finally spot a tree that is fairly full and doesn't have any other trees growing in it or right next to it. I ask Mac what he thinks. He tells me yeah it is a fuller tree am I sure that is the one. I tell him yep. Mac goes up and in about 10 seconds has the tree cut down. He is holding it above his head and carrying it with one hand down the hill. He bring it down and sets it in front of me. The tree is about as tall as my enormous 5'6" frame. I was standing down hill from the tree and it looked considerably taller. I tell Mac, "It's shorter than I thought it was." He tells me too bad there is no putting it back.

It was all good. We got home with no problems. We had to stop in Mud Lake to get gas. We placed the tree stand on cinder blocks to give it a six inch lift. The kids decorated the tree and it looks great. Every time I look at it I have to smile because I know it is always an adventure in our family!