I'd picked up a magazine about the Mingans in Havre St. Pierre, and, while cooking dinner, discovered the bit about the wooden trails. There was still an hour or so of daylight left, so I started agitating to Lee that we should go! We hurried up the dinner bit, and then went to tell the others of our plan (having three sites meant that we weren't doing the usual group congregating thing as much - Lee and I were sharing Site #3; Ron, Marti and Sam had Site #2; and Frank, Bill, Jim and Jim's big blue tarp were ensconced on Site #1.) Marti and Sam wolfed down their dinners, and joined us on a sunset scurry on the 1.8 km of wooden trails. There was a platform overlooking the island, a platform at the top of the cliffs, a platform at the base of the cliffs, a platform over the bog, and a platform with an outhouse (with toilet paper and rules, no doubt). The gorbies had gone home for the night, so we had the place to ourselves. And it was beautiful. The trails cut through the narrowest part of the island and come out at some monolights - which were bathed in evening light - on the other side. You can see why the gorbies flock to this place, in any case. Really, the wooden trails should also be said like you say sun! whales! puffins! dolphins! (wooden trails! monoliths at sunset!)

The morning brought boatloads more gorbies, starting at 8:45 - and no surprise, since the day dawned stunningly beautifully. I took an early morning walk along the beach, had my breakfast while watching a campground fox suck up to all of us (Sam fed it. Lee threw a rock at it. I think Lee's action demonstrated somewhat less gorby-like behaviour) and then decided that I wanted to circumnavigate this island on foot as well (total distance 14 km, but I wanted to do it in a figure-8 to do the wooden trails twice more, and then that brought my goal to 16 km). Lee was game to go with me, and as it turned out so were Jim, Marti, Frank and Bill (Ron and Sam opted to paddle, ending up at "the Zoo" (an area of monoliths shaped like animals on Grande Ile) among other places. We first did the shorter, 10 km loop and then took a lunch break back at the site. This was when I was hot enough to decide to "swim". I got out my saltwater soap (unlike the Great Lakes, I feel ok about washing in the ocean) and put on my swimsuit and sandals and dashed in. Yikes. I lost a sandal, and the 5 seconds it took me to retrieve it were enough to just about stop my heart. But then I soaped up, and had to do the polar bear dash again, and it was *hard*. So (shiver) cold. Lee didn't make it past his knees (this tidbit offered up to prove that I'm not just a whiner, it really was that cold). I had to sit in the sun for quite some time before I was convinced that I had not, in fact, frozen to death. But I was clean! Soon after that, Lee and I did the smaller, 4 km, loop, and it was just as lovely as the big loop. On the way back to the site, we saw Marti, Frank and Bill out for a paddle. And then there was something about beer cans (no problem chilling beer in the Mingans), and, while the beer can gauge was drifitng toward empty, Lee and I demonstrated that we can so hang a tarp perfectly ("almost perfect", Sam said when he brought his dinner over to join us. Whatever. It was *perfect*. As was our water provisioning system, in the form of three black dromedaries hung from the trees. I called them the seals). Our evening was spent around the beach firepit: I decided that it's easy to make a fire if you cheat (a capful of white gas). Ron realized that "easy" said nothing about "intact eyebrows", though. We sat around the fire, the night was clear, the gorbies had gone home. Somewhere in there, Lee and I got our headlamps and went on an only slightly creepy wander along the wooden trails. We got to one of the high platforms, turned out the lights, and watched the skies (this was during the Perseid meteor shower, just in case you weren't already envious enough.) So, to recap: wooden trails! beach fire! shooting stars! clear night!

But, just to remind you, we are doing the safe (and thus somewhat boring) playing by the rules thing. This meant we had *another* day and night on Ile Quarry. I had now explored all there was to explore on land, and joined Ron, Frank, Bill, Marti and Jim for a paddle the next day. It was really windy, and I wanted to play in the waves, but I found no takers. We went to Grand Ile (I had promised Sam I'd bring him back some sand, he had forgotten to get some the day before and he collects a tiny bit of sand from every island. And I'm sure that violates one of the rules, but Sam was doing it, not me!) and looked a the zoo. Jim even tried a bit of sailing on the way over and then, always being on the safe though never boring side, tied his boat and tied mine with it, so when we started getting confused as to whether the tide was coming or going during our wander on Grand Ile, I wasn't nervous about my boat floating away. The rest of them, however, were not as cocky, and the hike got cut short (but not so short that I didn't feast on beach peas and gooseberries). We spent a leisurely hour by our (firmly beached) boats eating lunch and then went back to Ile Quarry. It wasn't deemed safe for me to go play alone, so no circumnavigating Quarry by boat or visiting Ile Napiskau like I'd wanted to, but: monoliths! beach peas! gooseberries!

Meanwhile, back at the campsite... it was not a very gorby-intense day because it was cloudy. Sam did the 14 km loop around the island on his own, and Lee played in the waves and then scraped the mermaid residue off his bow (sounds mysterious, doesn't it?) When we got back, there were two more kayaks in our midst - for reasons we could never figure out, a young couple that was staying far down the beach had parked them there. In any case, the *perfect* tarp job came in handy because soon after we got back, it poured. Lee and I sat under our tarp feeling smug (ok, I felt smug, I have no idea what Lee was feeling). Then, some of the others went on the 4 km walk, and the rest of us hung out at the beach skipping stones (I believe Lee has a stone-skipping injury now. Wrath of the mermaid, no doubt). While we hung out on the beach, a fishing boat motored into the harbour, moored, and proceeded to spend the evening processing shellfish (I think), playing loud French pop songs, and shining lights. Isn't there a park rule about that? They were still there when I went to bed. At least I got some cool fishing boat in fog pictures.

And then, finally, it was time to move sites again. This of course meant another car shuttle (grrr) after more paddling in heavy fog the next day. The young couple who had parked their kayaks in our midst came to talk to me the next morning. They were on their first kayak trip ever, and though they had a compass, no knowledge of currents and no GPS. My advice to them was succinct: stay put until you can see where you're going. I'm sure they're nice people and perfectly competent in many ways, but they were putting themselves at risk by not being prepared for the conditions they ended up encountering. They should have visited with the OPS guys (mandatory OPS plug for this page). We, however, adequately endowed with competent navigators, made our way to town and did all the things we needed to do (fill up water, make phone calls, get a chocolate bar at the store, check out the gear store, go buy salads to taunt Sam with, buy a new battery for Bill's truck - you know, the usual things you do half-way through a kayak expedition!) By early afternoon, however, we were parking our vehicles behind the guard rail at the Riviere du Milieu, ready for Phase 3 of the Salty Dogs and Foggy Days adventure.