The Phoenix Family: A night of FUN!

During orientation all of our tour vendors that work with the McKinley Princess Lodge come and talk about their tours. Many of them offer to take us out on their tour so we can accurately inform our guests/passengers about their operations. One of the vendors that offered to take us out was D&S Trail guides. They operate our horseback riding and wagon ride tours. We were picked up in two different large groups to head up and experience a small portion of what our guests enjoy. When we arrived they lined all 25 of us (coworkers) along two large troughs that had zip-locs of sand/dirt/gravel. The first thing we did was learn to pan for gold. It was so much fun! Now, come to find out after the fact - they salt the soil. Meaning, they put the gold flakes in their soil so that their tour patrons get to walk away with a souviner. They then sat us around a fire to roast smore's! While we roast our marshmallow's they actually laminated our gold on their business card so we could take it with us. After that they gave us graham crackers to put in our mouths to "kiss the reindeer" Which is more like feeding them a snack. My first piece they gave me was large - but the person taking photos didn't have the camera quite ready. The next one they gave me (in punishment) was super small. I actually felt the nose of the reindeer on my mouth, literally giving the reindeer kisses. It was so much fun:) Brad is such a good sport, I'm glad he is so easy-going and willing to try new things!