July-August 2004 Article                      

Three Great Ideas for Small Group Events
Boats, trains, and lowcountry cooking

Build a Boat

It’s possibly the biggest vacation souvenir ever. Imagine returning home with your own skiff – one that you and your colleagues built with a little help from a friendly expert. The Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michael’s, Maryland, can launch the skiff-building event for you. What a team building exercise! What fun!

Called the Boat and Bed Package, it consists of one or two night’s stay at the Inn and a 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. session at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Participants work as a team, under the guidance of shipwrights, to build traditional rowing and sailing skiffs. They learn to shape bow stems, nail bottom boards, hang planks, or apply finishing details to make the skiffs shipshape. After your session the master boat builders finish the boat and can customize per your specifications, if you are buying it. Shipping can then be arranged.

The cost ranges from $315 (one night) to $630 (two nights) per person if you don’t plan to purchase your masterpiece. For the ultimate memento, the fee starts at $5,085 for a rowing skiff and $8,085 for the sailing skiff. This could be the perfect way to reward achievers and bring staffers together -- hands-on fun and a pampered stay at the 80-room Inn at Perry Cabin. 

A Train Ride Into History

Experience the breathtaking panorama of mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, tunnels, trestles and historic sites from the comfort of vintage parlor cars on board the White Pass Rail. Built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush, this narrow guage railroad shares honors with the Eiffel Tower and Panama Canal as one of 36 designated civil engineering marvels of the world. Completed in just 26 months, the railway connected the deep water port of Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon. 

The trip, offered by Logistics LLC of Anchorage, takes guests from Skagway to the remote Lake Bennett Station for a family-style lunch. The station is accessible only by train, hiking, or seaplane. After lunch guests hear a lecture by Col. Norman Vaughan, 98, a member of the first Byrd Antarctic Expedition 1928-30, and an expert on sled dogs. 

The return trip along historic Gold Rush routes is principally by Jeep and is accompanied by poems and songs of Robert Service. Period details are many on board the train and at the luncheon. The price for the journey is pretty hefty, but then, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Skagway trip can be arranged for from 10 to 800 people. For lovers of history, wilderness, and trains, it can’t be beat.

Do the Charleston… cooking scene.

One of the major reasons to plan an event, or a personal trip, to Charleston, SC, is to savor its wonderful lowcountry cuisine. The executive chef at the Charleston Grill at Charleston Place can take you one step further. For select small groups, he will teach you how to prepare some of the best of his innovative lowcountry dishes. 

Chef Bob Waggoner fuses lowcountry cooking and his own French-influenced technique to create a contemporary and sophisticated new southern haute cuisine using seasonal and regional ingredients. Every year since his tenure, Charleston Grill has been awarded AAA Four-Diamond, the Mobile Four-Star, and the Distinguished Restaurants of North America designation. Those are pretty great credentials for a cooking class instructor!

Classes given by this celebrated chef are truly special and rare events. But, if you have the need for an exceptional reward, this could be the fare for you. His classes also make a great activity when spouses are included in your retreat. And, just staying in Charleston Place, a romantic 450-room inn in the heart of Charleston, is a reward unto itself.


For more about the Inn at Perry Cabin and boat building, the Skagway rail trip and Logistics LLC, or lowcountry cuisine at Charleston Place, contact your Krisam or GEP representative or send an e-mail to newsletter@theeventinsider.com