I woke to sunshine! However, it didn’t last long. It clouded up and got breezy a half-hour later.

A chipmunk showed up at the fire grate – our first camp critter of the trip -- but it left and did not come back after I yelled at it. It must not yet be habituated to people and camp life.

Also a cow moose crossed the bay by the campsite and hung around for a little bit. That makes 5 moose spotted on this trip, though the first four were technically outside the BWCA.

It was quite the morning for wildlife. In addition to the chipmunk and moose, two otters swam up to the campsite and climbed out close to the fire grate. It looked as if they were coming up to see what they could rob from us. They immediately dove back in when they became aware of me. They did swim around the campsite for a bit, so I got to enjoy them a little longer and snap a couple of photos.

Last night I had a couple critters poking around my tent. They were way too small to be bears and too big to be rabbits. They seemed to be raccoon-size, but I have never seen a raccoon in the BWCA. This got me wondering if it may have been the two otters.

I relaxed around camp, read a little, and canoed around the area. I checked out the little stream by the campsite, the area the moose came from. Jim checked out the spring that was coming out of the hillside across from our camp and I followed his lead. I couldn’t get a good look at where it actually came out but could see the brook it formed.

After that Jim and I went on a little fishing expedition. Our goal was to catch enough for dinner. Jim trolled along in his Bell Magic. I paddled to an island that had some small boulders leading up to it. It looked like a smallmouth bass place to me and I was right. I caught a decent one on the first cast (a spinner jig with a white twister tail). Neither Jim nor I could bring in another from this spot, so we moved to another nearby island. It took several casts this time, but I caught another smallmouth – the same size as the first. I filleted them right there and we took them back to camp for a fish fry. This was our laziest day of the trip though we still had some activity to fill our day. The weather was nice. The Sawbill Outfitter’s website said that the high temperature for the day was 59 and the low 38. It seemed a bit nicer than that.