Laurel Creek Conservation Area St Jacobs

We are awake and out the door early this morning. 

We want to get to the St Jacobs Farmers Market nice and early to avoid the worst of the crowds.

St Jacobs Market is only about a 10 minute drive from our base camp here at Laurel Creek Conservation Area.  After we got the car parked, we stopped to visit the animals at the market.

 

Posed at the entrance for a photo op.

 

And then into the madness that is the St Jacobs Market.  Although at this hour the crowds have not arrived yet, but they are on their way.  In another hour or so, this place will be packed.

 

Lots of items for sale outdoors and indoors.

 

We wandered around for an hour or so checking prices and then we came back to make our purchases.  We bought bed sheets for the house and the motorhome.  We bought delicious sweets like butter tarts and sticky buns.  We bought fruits and vegetables.

 

We put all of our purchases in the trunk of the car and then we bought tickets for the St Jacobs Horse Drawn Wagon Tours.

 

The tour today will take us to see a working Mennonite farm.  Along the way we passed by these horses out in the field.

 

We are on our way to visit the Mathew Martin Farm.  A very large producer of maple syrup in this area.

 

We got to learn how maple syrup is collected.  The old fashioned way was with taps and buckets, but the modern way now is with plastic hoses running from tree to tree and a pump located back at the sugar shack to suck all of the sap into the boiling room.

 

At the end of our tour, I bought some maple syrup, this will taste so good on my breakfast pancakes.



We got back to our motorhome just after noon hour and had a nice lunch.  Then we went for a walk around the campground.  There was a dragon boat team practicing out on the lake.

 

We walked around by the dam and got some pictures of the water flowing over the edge.

 

There is a nice little beach.

 

We decided to try our hand at Geocaching.  I have a Geocaching app on my iPhone so we went off in search of the first cache.  Geocaching is like a treasure hunt.  You follow the clues and the gps coordinates till you find the cache. 

This cache is hidden in this old rotted tree stump.

 

When you find the cache you can open it up, sign the log book and then you can take a little trinket, but only if you put in a trinket.  We didn’t have anything with us to trade, so we just signed the book and then re-hid the box for the next geocacher to find.  

This is a fun way to get out and explore parts of the campground that you would never explore otherwise.  The fun is in the chase and tracking down the hidden box full of goodies.  We will try to find some more caches after dinner.



Back at our campsite, there is a squirrel sitting at our picnic table.

 

I cooked us up some burgers on our Weber Q BBQ and then after dinner we went for another walk and searched for another geocache.

 

We found it after following the clues and narrowing down the search area with the gps.  This one is hidden in a tangle of tree branches.

  

Karen wanted to try to find one on her own, so off we went in search of the next geocache.

 


We had fun finding these hidden caches and tomorrow we will go off in search of some more. 

To learn more about geocaching, go to the official geocaching website.  You can learn more and download the app onto your smart phone.  Then you too can get out and find your first cache.  

We probably walked a total of 8-10 KM today thanks to the St Jacob’s Market and our geocaching hikes.

Back at the motorhome we had an evening fire and roasted marshmallows.

 

To see all of our photos from today you can find them on our FLICKR site.