The alarm woke me up at 6 and I grabbed my camera and headed down to the shore. While walking along the paved walkway near the docks, I suddenly looked up and saw the rear end of a moose not 15 feet away from me browsing in the brush on the side of the walk way. Unfortunately, it was still to dark to get a good picture and the moose moved further into the foliage when it noticed my presence.

I hurried along the Stoll Trail to the first break in the woods where I could access the rocky shore with a view east. With no clouds in the sky it wasn't a spectacular sunrise, but I managed to catch a bright red horizon and the siloutte of the shoreline.

After breakfast we returned to the dock to catch another ferry, this one would take us across the island to Windigo and allow us to traverse the island to Rock Harbor. The Voyageur II was already at the dock (having reached Rock Harbor yesterday), but there was surprisingly little movement from the crew given the pending departure. By 8am (our scheduled departure time) I had guessed that the Voyageur II operated on Central time instead of Eastern (which the island and other ferries follow).

Most of our fellow passengers were continuing on from Windigo, returning to the mainland, their trips completed. Even depleted of food their backpacks seemed larger than ours, and I had one person ask me if my pack was a GoLite model. Grant and I were going fairly lightweight this trip, and seemed to have the lightest pack weights of anyone we saw on the island.

As we cruised along the southeast side of the island we could make out the profile of the Greenstone Ridge - our primary hiking route for the next few days. We were able to pick out the fire tower on Mount Ojibway and Mount Desor (the highest point in the park).

Windigo Harbor wasn't such a long open expanse as Rock Harbor, and we enjoyed the journey past several islands and the more intimate feel of the area. We got off at the dock and loaded up all our water containers for the hike into the Island Mine campsite. Yesterday, the ranger had warned us that there might not be any water available at Island Mine. I was definitely pushing the capacity of my lightweight pack by carrying 1.5 gallons of water for a total pack weight of around 35 pounds.

A few backpackers returning to Windigo passed us by as we struggled upward. The assured us there was a little water flow still at Island Mine. Even so, Grant and I continued to haul the water inland and we arrived at Island Mine around 4:15. I was glad to see some open campsites, since our itinerary doesn't actually guarantee us campsites. We hoped to finish up all our hiking days earlier than today to ensure we had our pick of spots.

The mosquitoes were somewhat annoying and Island Mine would be the only campsite that allowed fires, so we hunted far into the woods for dead wood that hadn't already been scavenged by earlier campers for our fire. The smoke helped keep the bugs at bay and we cooked around the fire, slowly burning our stash of small branches until we were ready to retire.