We’re officially only a couple of days into the autumn season, but I’ve already noticed some stores beginning to prepare their holiday displays! I’m usually a firm believer in one holiday at a time, but I must admit that this year, we’ve already begun preparing for Christmas.

Here in the Black Hills, the U.S Forest Service allows people to purchase a permit and go cut down their own Christmas tree. The permit usually costs about $10 and has a few rules as to what type and size of tree can be cut.

Last year, my wife and I decided that it would be a fun adventure to go hunt down the perfect tree. So, Clark Griswold-style, we headed out in the 4-wheel drive sleigh, hoping to find the best looking, fullest tree that we could.

Thanks to a mid-November blizzard, all of the tree branches were covered with heavy snow, so it was a definite challenge trying to find a tree that might look good, once it was defrosted.

We had a lot of fun searching and eventually did find a tree south of Deadwood, near Rochford, that we were happy with. We learned a thing or two in the process and decided that this year we’d start scouting that perfect tree before the snow flies.

We have done a bit of geocaching here in the Black Hills, so we decided to geocache for the perfect Christmas tree, except in reverse.  So a few days ago we went for a drive, with the sole purpose being to look for the perfect tree.

We got out and hiked around in several different places, and whenever we would find a potential tree for this season, we’d mark it’s location, using the GPS device.

It was a fun experiment and I think we found a couple of good possibilities that won’t look quite so much like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree this year. So, once December rolls around, we’ll head back out into the Black Hills and use the GPS coordinates to find the trees that we’ve already checked out. Hopefully, the logging companies don’t beat us there.