Your truly with the prize!
The Christmas Tree for 2006

Your truly with the prize!
The Christmas Tree for 2006

The Monday after Thanksgiving holds a special place for Mary and I in Vermont. We refer to it as 'Christmas Tree Monday". Each year, in late October - early November, we trek out into the woods to find a Christmas Tree to take home. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, I gather some friends, and with chain saw in hand, we go back to the marked tree and cut it for that years Christmas Tree. We started the tradition before we owned the inn while living in Massachusetts, and have carried it over each year since we moved to Vermont.

Cutting down the Inn's Christmas Tree for 2006. Billy B - left, Yours truly - right, and Peter doing the honors.

This year, four of us went out into the woods to get this years tree. Now lest you think we are taking wild Vermont trees, the woods actually are located on a retired Christmas Tree farm where the owner still allows us to take trees. Peter from the Forerunner Ski Shop provided the transportation, I navigated, Billy B brought the rope to tie the trees to the truck, and Howie manned the camera to take pictures of the event.

Raising the Inn's Christmas Tree for 2006. From left, Billy B, Yours truly, Peter and Howie. Mary was on the camera.

Standing in the forest, this years tree stood about 16 feet. Trimmed out and standing in the Inn's great room, it measures 13 feet 5 inches. Billy B and Peter both got trees about the same size, with the plan to trim them down to around 10 feet at home. Over the next couple of days, Mary will be decorating the tree, along with the inn, to prepare for the Christmas season. For those of you visiting the Killington area, the tree should be just about finished being decorated by this coming Friday if you want to stop bye and see it.

Part of the festivities associated with Christmas Tree Monday is a nice lunch. This year we visited Sushi Yoshi for some chinese food. While there, we spoke with several locals who had journeyed out to the mountain this morning to ski. From the local reports, the mountain is still holding up reasonably well from the weekend. Warm temperatures had created some very soft surfaces. Some area's had thin cover. The forecast in the area calls for warm temperatures the next couple of days. Towards the end of the week, temperatures should become more seasonable and allow the resort to resume snowmaking.