Christmas Tree Sale Wrapup-Heading West

December 11-24, 2019

On 12/22 we closed our Christmas tree lot at dark. That evening the owners came around and paid us our wages. With wages, deliveries and tips we are happy with what we earned for 26 days of 12 hour days. We do plan to return though to a different lot, we’ll be in Carrolton TX, north side of the DFW Metroplex. Our thoughts are we will then stay in TX, either volunteering or at our place on the Gulf Coast.


The stats for the 2019 season: Sold 429 trees, sales totaled $81,615, average sales per day = 17, average daily sales = $3,130, average tree cost = $190.  The busiest day was Saturday after Thanksgiving when we sold 58 trees, we had over $11k in sales. The slowest day was our last Friday when we sold 1 tree for $100. The owners came around daily to pick up the previous day’s receipts.  We had a total of 500+ trees when we started, 60 of those were donated the last weekend for a fish habitat when we closed on 12/22 we had 26 trees that went to a chipper. The owners were very pleased with our work, thankfully we had some great tips from our friends who usually run the lot. We were tasked with taking ownership of the lot which we did, and the results showed since we’ve been asked repeatedly to return we know we did well. We are so glad to be done though. Our last night on the lot after we closed we walked across the street to Palio’s Pizza for our first meal out since we opened.


Monday 12/23 we were up and on the road, 365 miles later we arrived at Monahans Sandhill State Park. The park exists because the surrounding area is sand dunes where you can slide down the hills on disks, the round type we used to use for snow. The sites are very small and it took a bit for us to get into ours, the sites have so much sand on them you don’t know where the asphalt ends and the sand begins. We finally got settled into site 9. The nearby town of Monahans didn’t have much in the way of open restaurants, we had hoped to eat out, and instead, we headed home, after fueling up, for a dinner of hotdogs and an early bedtime.

Tuesday, 12/24, we were on the road by 6:30 am, we had 540 miles to go before our day ended. An uneventful ride found us pulling into Kartchner Caverns State Park in Benson AZ at 2:30. A great pull-thru, easy satellite set up and Verizon has a decent signal. We’ll be here for 4 nights before heading to Tucson and then onto Phoenix.

We wish our family and friends a wonderful and joyous holiday season. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS