Thunder Road

Day 23

The storms last night left us with a cool morning. It was hard to get out of the tent. One of the very best purchases we made for this trip was a two person sleeping bag. It saves a lot of room when packing all the gear, and it's lovely to snuggle up in, as you can imagine.

We have decided to go in search of booze today. We've heard tell of an artisan distillery on the eastern shores of PEI, so our goal today is to find it. As navagatrix, I have fun leading us up and down all manner of red dirt roads. The east side of this island seems “wilder” somehow than the other parts we've seen; there are more stretches of forest, more national parks. As we ride, the weather worsens until we're riding through low, gray skies, and a chilly mist that comes off the ocean. I have all my gear on by now.

Within an hour or so we are in Rollo Bay (originally an Acadien settlement, incidentally) at the The Myraid View Distillery. The setting is ideal; a beautiful view of the Northumberland Strait from a tidy little plot with cottage, cottage garden, and still. The Pirate and I are both expecting the same thing: a super fancy tasting room with hipsters pouring booze and acting as though they know something about it, or at least that they know more than we do. This expectation proves we're from Asheville. Anyhow, what we get is quite the opposite.

There is a tiny show room as you enter, and a sweet lady who will help you find what you're looking for, and pour you what you'd like to taste. We are the only ones there. It's heaven. While tasting no fewer than nine artisan distilled spirits, she tells us the story of this “Strait” (as in Northumberland) booze. It's the labor of love of the local M.D. He brews and his wife does the distillations. He acquired this hobby after partying with his “flock” of patients who were desperate to keep him in their midst (I guess doctors are hard to keep around in rural PEI). Before he left a party, someone always asked him if he'd like a bit of shine, which he did, and he liked it so much he decided to go through the effort of legalizing it and producing his own. He started out with two kinds of shine: Strait Lighting and Strait Shine. Since then he's added a whiskey, a pastis, a gin, rum and navy strength rum, and dandelion shine. They're all delicious.

PEI shine is a bit different than what we get in NC. It's brewed with molasses and cane. We asked so many questions about how and why all of this was made that we (along with some lucky folks who walked in just as we were entering the secret room) got a tour of the still itself. The room with the still is kept separate from the public. It stays surgically clean. There is one giant still and lots of huge stainless steel barrels containing all of the liquid it brings forth. Behind the still are stacks of barrels aging things like brandy and whiskey. Canadian whiskey has to be aged a minimum of three years before it's right. The gin is infused with 8 spices (or “spoices” as the local accent would have it) that are organic, grown on the premises, and added not to the mash (which would exhaust the essential oils in the herbs) but up in the vapors. Genius.

We leave with a bottle of the gin and a bottle of the lightning. We're giddy.

We take the long way home, winding around the northern most tip of the eastern edge of the island. I have figured out how to locate on the map the fish shops, it's not hard: find the bay, then find the most inland tip of the bay; if there are boats, there is a fish shop. Voila, the equation works like a charm, and we stop in St. Peters for a nice pre-cooked lobster. I like to get them cooked because I hate the idea of driving 50 more miles with a live, freaked out creature in the saddle bag. That's a good way to ruin dinner.

We stop at our neighborhood country store for sausages, garlic, potatoes and corn to go in an “Ex-pat Boil” that we plan to do over the campfire tonight. It's fun; we pretend we're making a cooking show and video the whole thing. Let me tell you, this is the best food we've ever made. The broth is out of this world, the corn is sweet and crunchy, the potatoes are not-too-soft, the sausage is chewy and hot, and the lobster is just perfect. To top it all off, we've made a cocktail with mostly gin and a splash of the lightning that's about as good of a martini as I've had on this trip. The Pirate thinks that his old buddy Hank would have even approved.