After a brief stop at the Metro grocery store to buy groceries we travelled down Hwy 299 for a new adventure. Near the junction of Hwy 299 and the Murdochville road, there is the Mont Lyall Agate Mine (48.80427N, 66.08610W) where we prospected for geodes and agate after a brief training session of what to look for and which types were no good.

It was very hot and humid and hard work, but in the end we used our pick hammers and dug up some rocks to take down to the stone cutter who told us which ones were promising and cut those open for us. After all the hard work, we had three rocks that were good.

A nearby stream of cold, fresh water helped cool us down and reversed the effects of heat exhaustion.

On our east coast trip in 2019 we discovered Ferme Bourdages (48.07730N, 65.59403W) which had the best strawberries we’ve ever had. It was time to pay them a visit again, but alas, no strawberries available this time. It was disappointing, but a strawberry vine and strawberry pie would have to do. The pie survived about half an hour while the vine will be coming home with us.

To our great surprise, the farm offers full-featured free overnight camping with toilets, showers, laundry, dump station and even electricity.

We met a German couple with a licence plate starting with MG which is the Mönchengladbach area in Germany where Ruth is originally from. They were just finishing three months of touring eastern Canada in the 18 year old RV that they had shipped over from Germany and that was having some mechanical problems, so we hope they make it back to Halifax so it can be shipped home.