We got to the Wentworth Inn in mid-afternoon.  There was plenty of daylight left for us to take a look around.  Since it was the middle of the day and the middle of the week, the town and the Inn were pretty empty (except for the grade school kids).  Most of the guests were already out on the slopes or on the trails.

This just meant we had the whole place to ourselves.  We took advantage of this opportunity to take some photographs of the outside, the gorgeous lobby, and the room.   There is a more extensive write-up of the accommodations on Carolyn's World.

We have to say that the Wentworth Inn surpassed our expectations.  The staff was extremely friendly.  The room was beautifully appointed.  We had to keep reminding ourselves that we were there to WORK...not to just lounge around in front of the fire in our Inn bathrobes :-)

We got ourselves off the couch and headed out to take a look around Jackson.  The town of Jackson is just postcard quaint.  The town library is this little building next to the river.

The warm temperature caused a lot of the ice to melt, creating meandering cracks which in turn caused a charming babbling sound.  Since there was no traffic to speak of in Jackson, if we listened carefully, we could hear that background babbling sound everywhere we went.

Walking around was also the perfect time to test out the Kata S312 camera bag.  We'll have a more detailed photo report on this unit soon.  We got it just before the trip and thought we would bring it along "just to see" :-)  Well, like other Kata gear we've tested, this bag lives up to it heritage.

We also wanted to break in the Dunham boots a little more before our trek the next day.  These boot have a very soft leather shell, but since they are fairly new, we wanted to break them in as much as possible before using them for an extended trek.

We wandered around for an hour or so but there was nothing much happening in Jackson during the day...even the coffee shop was closed.

In fact, the only "wildlife" we happened upon were the ice sculptures :-)  The Wentworth Inn porch was the gallery the inn's ice sculpture competition.  It was a good thing the judging had already occured since the temperature was had warmed up so much that the propeller on the bi-plane had already fallen off.  Good thing the sun goes down so that the sculptures can firm up some.

We were starving after our drive up and walk around the town.  The Wentworth Inn had this AMAZING dinner deal that we just could not pass up.   We got a table in front of the fireplace and feasted on an incredible five course meal.  We would have loved to have stayed up and had an after dinner drink at the bar, but we knew that we had a lot of work ahead of us tomorrow, so we turned in early...well, not that early...there was giant jacuzzi in the room after all.

We've decided to do things differently on RainyDaySports in 2006: instead of doing individual FirstUse reviews for each piece of gear, we'll be taking a bunch of gear with us on planned outings and reviewing them as a group.

We have a lot of vendors participating in this first outing (Adidas, Magellan, Tubbs, etc...)!

For the FirstUse report, we'll take all the gear with us up to Jackson's Wentworth Inn on the snowshoeing trip to see how well they perform.

Winter Outing:

1. The Gear

2. Heading to Jackson

3. The Inn

4. The Outing

Related Reviews:

1. 180s (Exhale, ExoLite, Mortise)

2. Addidas Kumasi XCR

3. CamelBak Hydration Pak

4. Columbia Sportswear

5. Dunham Waffle Boots

6. HighGear Compass

7. Kombi Gloves

8. Magellan GPS

9. Tavo Gloves

10. Technica Boots

11. Tubbs Snowshoes

12. UnderArmour Underlayer