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Our goal was to finish filming the rest of the locations for the Collecting around Bancroft Canada, so we needed to keep up a quick pace. We were going to visit the Bear Lake Diggings first. This location is known for its yellow apatite crystals.

I was set back a little ways in the woods, down a trail.

You could see were many people had been digging before us.

We didn’t actually collect anything ourselves, but while filming we met Ron McNall & Jana MacDougall who gave us a few of what they collected that day during the field trip.

After that it was on to the Diamond Lake to collect scapolite and dravite. I was glad that it wasn’t back in the forest because the bugs had been eating us alive since we arrived.

The key was to stay in one place and examine the gravel at the side of the road.

Next we drove to the Beryl Pit, which turned out to much further away than we expected.

Once we got there we had to stop at the local general store and talk to the lady at the counter for registration and directions, and then drive back to the mine.

Justin found a four leaf cover right there, which promptly put in his “billfold”.

It would be a great place to take kids to collect minerals.

My favorite part was the in the back of the quarry.

Big pools of water filled with frogs (that Justin discovered first)!

We camped at the Lost Lake Campground outside of town, so we were rested for a new day.

There were two locations for Fluororichterite just a few miles over in Wilburforce. Both were roadcuts on back country roads. These spots at first looked like just some boitite mica at first, but with a little poking around they turned out to be just loaded with nice, terminated crystals.

We found both singles,

and clusters.

In a rather short amount of time, we had a pile of nice medium sized specimens,

and a ziploc bag of smaller crystals and “toe-nails”.

After that is was off to collect white Actinolite from Dyno Road.

Much like the 2 previous stops, this spot was also a roadcut.

I was pleasantly surprised at how nice, and nearly gemmy the blades were.

After a brief sojourn in the land of our youth, it was time to start the North Eastern leg of our journey. Justin decided that we would go to Bancroft first, and then make our way down through the other states. Nether of us had been to Canada since we were kids, so we were excited.

Once we got the border the cars were lined up, but everything was moving along fairly quickly.

We arrived in town pretty early, because we wanted to get to the Camber of Commerce before they closed.

Justin had read on their website that you could get all the information that you needed for collecting in the area. We already had a pretty good idea of what’s up, but we like to stop and see what additional info we can find while we are in the area.

Unfortunately they didn’t really carry books anymore. It needed to be revised; however they did give us some pamphlets for a couple of pay sites and rock shops in the area.

We also saw the remains of the Bancroft Mineral Museum.

So we decided to check out the shops since it was too late to collect. The first place we stopped was Lakeside Gems; Nature Shop and Studio.

We talked with the owners Linda Bast & Terry Brenneman a little about what’s up, and checked out the nice selection of Estwing hammers they had in the mineral/rockhounding section of the store.

They didn’t have any actual collecting books, but they did have this kinda meh, DVD/CD guide thing, so we decided to get it, and see what it was like.

After that we headed out to the Princess Sodalite Mine & Rock Shop.

Inside we spoke with the owner, Andy Christie. It turns out that the actual Princess Sodalite Mine itself isn’t open to collecting, but he said that we could go in to film and take pictures for historical reasons.

The Princess Sodalite was named because of the The Princess of Wales (Future Queen Mary) was so enamoured by its color.

This mine has passed through quite a few hands since 1893 when the material was first shown at the Chicago World’s Fair. Besides numerous private individuals, The Princess Sodalite Mine has also been under the control of both the British Crown and the Canadian Department of Mines at one point or another.

After we finished up filming we went back in to talk with Andy some more.

He had some jewelry made from some of the Princess Mine Sodalite.

But my favorite thing was the awesome floor.

Before we left, Andy gave us a really good guide laying out most of the outcrops, roadcuts and quarries in the area. Being as all the mileages were in kilometers, It gave Justin a chance to hone is math skills.

And then it was back Bancroft for diner at the WORST Chinese Resturaunt (Chan’s Chinese Resturaunt) we had ever been to.

No really, it was bad.