A few more shovelfuls of sand and Emily will strike gold — or clams, as the case may be. RELATED STORIES Dudley's Journal All Steamed Up

Follow these simple tips to make your clam digging experience a good one.

Steaming Steamers

• Soak or rinse steamer clams in ocean water (not fresh water) before cooking them. They'll "spit" out most of the grit and sand from where they were dug and will be easier to eat.

• To cook the steamers, put them into a pot with no water and cook them over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until they open — they should look firm and taste done. It's as simple as that.

• Steamers make their own juice, so no water should be added to the pot when you cook them.

Down the Hatch

• Steamers are usually served with drawn butter or garlic butter in one bowl and the clams' juice in another bowl.

• To eat a steamer, pull the clam out of the shell, take the skin off of the tube, rinse the clam in clam juice, dip it in the butter and enjoy.

New Brunswick and Nouveau Brunswick

• New Brunswick is a truly bilingual province with a proud Acadian heritage. We dug for clams outside of Caraquet, which is almost exclusively French-speaking.

• There are many small farming villages and fishing towns to visit along the coast. We especially enjoyed Route 11 and Route 134, which take you through many of these towns.

• Acadia is the ancestral home of the French-speaking Cajuns of Louisiana. You can hear how the name "Cajun" comes from "Acadian."