Northshore Mining's first train of the day is called for 5am at Babbitt, MN, and takes a little over 2 hours to get to Silver Bay. Our campsite was a little over an hour away from Silver Bay, so I woke up at 4:45am to be in Silver Bay by 6:30 so that I could catch the 5 o'clock loads. The morning dawned completely overcast and cold, and the closer to Silver Bay the worse the weather looked. I finally made it to Silver Bay, and made my way west along the tracks as the rain begain to fall. I soon found myself at the rock cut at MP 5, and exited the car into the drizzle. The forcast had said it would be in the 80s all week, so other than my T-shirt and shorts I didn't have anything besides my raincoat and the sweatshirt that mom had gotten the night before. It wasn't enough. As I hiked in to the shot, the wet knee high grass left my socks and shoes soaked and I wished that I had brought my hunting boots along.

I finally reached the spot I wanted and set up the tripod, camera, camera cover, and my camp chair, composing the shot against the rock cut so as to have as little sky showing as possible. There I sat and waited as the wind blew the cold rain all over me and my equipment. 40 minutes later, the detector just up the line went off: it read 43 degrees out. Suddenly the drizzle let up and a dense fog appeared up at the signals just west of my location. Soaked and chilled to the bone, I quickly recomposed the shot down that way as headlights appeared around the bend and took this first shot of what would be one of the greatest shooting days I've ever had. With the rain water still dripping off of me, I stood there and watched in awe as the 5 o'clock loads roaded out of the fog and past the rock cut. Of the six shots from this location, only this one comes close to doing justice to that experience. But even this shot doesn't really live up to the impressiveness of the moment. Near Silver Bay, MN, 6/28/07