The national Christmas tree was cut Wednesday in New Mexico.
The flatbed trailer carrying the 60 foot tall blue spruce will be making five stops in Texas for public viewing on its two and a half week trip to the U.S. Capitol.
Click HERE to be directed to the capitoltreetracker.com website for additional information.
The schedule of public viewings of the tree in Texas are:
November 15 from 5:30 until 6:30 p.m. at the El Paso Zoo,
November 16 from 6 until 7 p.m. at The Alamo in San Antonio,
November 17 from 11 a.m. until noon at Blue Skies Air Force Village in San Antonio,
November 17 from 4 until 5 p.m. in Georgetown’s downtown plaza, and
November 18 from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. on Lufkin’s downtown Main Street.
RED RIVER, N.M. (AP) _ A 60-foot (18-meter) blue spruce was cut down Wednesday during a ceremony in a forested canyon in northern New Mexico, starting a 21/2 -week journey that will take it to the U.S. Capitol to be this year’s Christmas tree.
A sawyer used a chain saw to sever the trunk, which one of two cranes then jerked several feet up in the air. Then both cranes swung the tree over to a flatbed trailer at the Carson National Forest site.
The tree will tour New Mexico before leaving on a trip scheduled to conclude Nov. 24 at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.
According to the project website, stops are scheduled in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
Each year a national forest is selected to share a tree with the nation.