It started raining overnight and the day was overcast and cold. Once again, we had to wear every article of clothing to stay warm. Our bag is supposed to be good for 30 degrees so my guess is that we were down to the mid 20s. As long as we stayed cuddled up together and inside, it was great. Unfortunately, I am a 50 year old male so I have no idea what it’s like to have 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep. No matter what Pam thinks (and I never get tired of hearing the phrase “something must be wrong with you”) if I only get up once, that’s a great night; twice is an ok night; three times is a normal night. I had another normal night of sleep and so did George.
After breakfast we played cards for a while waiting for it to warm up. Finally, we gave up hope and headed to the general store to have a catered lunch. As long as we were moving, it was pleasant and since we weren’t carrying packs we felt optimistic. We set out with the object of hiking to Cumberland Point to see the southwest part of the island. As usual, we had a small ridge to climb up and then we got rewarded with broad views of the widest part of the island. We walked the trail for a couple of miles to get nice views of Lake Superior, but after a while we decided to turn back because we hadn’t brought any water with us.
When we crested the ridge on the return, we heard a new sound that we hadn’t heard before or could identify. It was definitely not natural. When we got a chance we headed down to an overlook that allowed us to see back to Windigo. Mystery solved, there was a Coast Guard ship parked at the dock.
We explored some more and walked through the moose exclosure—a small plot of land with a chainlink fence around it to see how the foliage would look in a natural state without moose converting all the green into shit. It didn’t look too different to me. We then headed down to the dock to take a look at the ship. When we walked out on the dock, a seaman came out to talk to us (he was apparently the watchman). They were just on a routine mission checking buoys around the island and making sure things weren’t damaged over the winter. If we had asked, I think they would have let us tour the ship, but the rest of the crew were having mess so we decided to leave them in peace and head back to our shelter for supper.
After supper we got everything packed up as well as we could for tomorrow. We got everything ready to take showers in the morning and have clean clothes for the ferry ride off the island. As usual, we played cards before bed with the twist that we had no treats. We had finally polished off of the alcohol and popcorn.