Our Christmas family tradition: a special trip to the mountains to get a live Christmas tree. We go to the same tree farm each year. Although it changed ownership this year, the new owners of Frosty’s Trees still carry through with all the same traditions we’d come to know and love. We still got our hot chocolate and s’mores complete with a fun and sometimes really bumpy hay ride.

We arrived at the cabin, settled in and watched football. The game lasted a while and we managed to stay up until 1am or, in other words, waaaayyyyy past bedtime for everyone. We didn’t have anywhere in particular to be in the morning so we could sleep in.

The next morning, we decided it would be best to wait until the afternoon, when we were heading out of town, to get the tree. The morning was filled with other small outings. At least one morning of every mountain trip, we have to go get a sausage biscuit. I don’t have to cook breakfast on “sausage biscuit” days so I don’t argue. And I have to admit I really like a good sausage biscuit. We had some time to spare after breakfast so we went to the local dollar store to do some “shopping”. We didn’t need anything but picked up a few fun items including pink duct tape. We got back to the cabin and I may or may not have taken a nap on the couch while the rest of the family took pictures with me asleep on the couch. (Very funny guys!)

Finally, it was time to go get the tree. We loaded up the car with kids, dogs and all our stuff then headed to the tree farm. It was getting cooler as the evening went along so we decided to get our hot apple cider and hot chocolate to keep us warm while we took our hay ride. The man driving the tractor pulling our hay ride told us to let him know when we saw a tree we liked. It was a BIG farm and we rode for a while finishing up our cider and hot chocolate before we decided to stop.

As we were unloading the hay ride we realized we forgot our tree measuring stick which was also the stick we were supposed to wave to let them know where we were when we found our tree. Then I looked up and realized the hay ride driver was not sticking around until we found our tree. As he was supposed to do, he drove off and left us in the middle of the tree farm. We were on the last hay ride of the day so we knew he wasn’t coming back. Now, I am a pretty tall person but I was no match for those 10 foot tall trees. To our disadvantage, my family was well hidden among the trees. We were kind of laughing at our predicament until we realized the sun was going down and the temperature was dropping. Soon we heard the sound of a “Tree Recovery Vehicle” revving through the rows of trees. The “Tree Recovery Vehicle” (TRV) is an all terrain vehicle, trailer in tow, with the sole purpose of taking trees back to the baler at the farmhouse. Thankfully, our hay ride driver radioed over that he dropped us off without a way to signal them when we were ready. They came looking for us. When the “Tree Recovery Vehicle” got close, we hollered, yelled and jumped up and down (like over-active monkeys) until they saw us and came to our rescue.

We found our perfect tree, loaded it on the TRV and headed back to the farmhouse for some s’mores. After we devoured our deliciously gooey snack, I headed to the car to help strap the tree to the roof. In years past, we drove the truck to get the tree. This year, for various reasons, I decided we should take the car. The truck was easy: throw tree in back of truck, drive home. The car was a whole different beast. We had to strap the tree to the top of the car. I had some straps but soon realized I didn’t have enough straps to keep the tree from flying off the car. The guys helping me strap knew what they were doing and had some extra rope to help tie down. For my job as a rowing coach, I have to strap boats on trailers all the time but strapping a tree to the top of a car, well, that was a whole new experience for me. I thought it would be pretty similar to the boats. Turns out, not so much.

The tree was strapped and we were ready to go. I was nervous but it seemed everything would hold for our 3 hour trip home. We turned out of the tree lot onto the mountain road. So far so good. The tree was still on top of the car. Twisting, turning, putting the straps to the test, still good. It looked like the tree was going to stay on the car after all. Nothing to worry about. Whew! One more turn and we were on the relatively straight “major” road that would carry us most of the way home. We made the turn and everything seemed to be holding…until we got up to about 50mph. As soon as we hit 50mph, there was a loud sound. Fortunately, it was not the sound of the tree flying off the car or scraping on the roof.

The sound was…humming! The tree was humming and it wasn’t humming a nice Christmas tune or making a joyful sound. This hum was a car shaking, eardrum shattering hum. I imagine the sound was similar to that of riding above the engine on the wing of a plane. We needed earplugs but I tried to brush it off and say, “We are just going to have to deal with it. If the sound stops then we know the tree flew off the car. Consider it a safety hum.” My family didn’t buy it.

We made our first stop to try and quiet the humming. From what I could figure, the humming was coming from one of the straps we used on the tree not the tree itself. Thankfully, we had the bright pink duct tape from our earlier shopping ventures. I tried taping the straps I thought were humming and we were on our way. At first we thought the problem was fixed. Not so. As soon as we hit 50 mph the humming was back. Ugh! We tried 2 more times to fix the hum but no luck. The 4th time my hubby figured it out. Finally! 45 minutes from home and no more humming. Lots of duct tape and one sock did the trick. After the humming stopped I turned to my hubby and commented, “Now we won’t know if the tree flies off the top of the car. The safety hum is gone!”

Four hours after the beginning of our trip, we slowly pulled into our very steep driveway while I prayed the tree wouldn’t slide off the front of the car from the angled drive. Down the hill, car in park, we made it! I was so worried the whole trip home that the 10 ft tree would fly off the car but it stayed strapped. Turns out the tree wasn’t going anywhere, even after we stopped. It took us a full 30 minutes to get the tree off the car, free of all pink duct tape and straps.

Success! Mark one more tree outing in our Christmas memories, one I’m sure none of us will forget for a long time. Did I mention we bought an artificial tree a few years ago, our “just in case” tree? Just in case we didn’t make it to the mountains for our annual Christmas tree cutting tradition, we’d have the artificial one on standby. It’s still in the box.