When we stopped in Souris, we did some reverse figuring. Both Chris and I were due to fly out from Charlottetown Saturday morning. In my case, at 6:30am, way too early to be able to pack my bicycle up before heading to the airport. So we knew we needed to be in Charlottetown by Thursday night, to have Friday to pack the bikes and relax before our flights. As we counted backwards from there, we needed Thursday to get from Wood Islands to Charlottetown, and Wednesday to get from Souris to Wood Islands — but it was only Tuesday! I had mis-planned the schedule and we had an extra day on our hands. We weren’t sure what to do with the extra time. We thought about taking an extra day of camping at Wood Islands, but didn’t make a firm decision.
When we woke up at Bulwinkle’s Place, breakfast was a massive spread of bacon, eggs, ham, crepes and french toast. There was hot coffee, cookies and all manner of breakfast to be had, it was amazing, delicious and just what we needed to start the day. The other guests also joined us, and we had a great conversation. One of the guests was a aquaculture consultant, originally from Montreal, but now living nearby to me in Sunnyvale, California. Luckily, his French was much sharper than mine, as the other guests were a couple from Montreal heading for vacation via the ferry to Iles de la Madeleine, Quebec in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We had a great discussion about living in the Bay Area, and got to know one another while eating such a great breakfast.
After breakfast, we all went our separate ways. Chris and I went out and started to get the bikes loaded up, only to find… more dreary drizzle! Grrrr….. Environment Canada weather forecast fail! We were so mad! The current weather conditions didn’t even report that it was drizzling in Souris. We decided to settle in for a coffee at a nearby Robin’s Donuts to try to wait out the rain in Souris.
Over an hour of coffee drinking and doughnut eating later, the drizzle was still coming down, and the forecast for the day had finally changed to all-day showers. Sigh. We decided to head out into the drizzle regardless, since by this point it was after 11:00am.
We jumped straight on the highway and rode. It really wasn’t all that remarkable on the journey. We didn’t even bother taking pictures along the way since we were too cold and tired of being cold to bother.
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We rode and rode, but by about 50km (35mi) in we were suffering, and really looking for lunch. We arrived into Montague, stopped off at the grocery store and ate an entire pound of strawberries between the two of us. Afterwards, we headed downtown to look for a place to eat a real lunch. We stopped off at what had been the train station (when PEI still had a railroad) and now hosted a cafe and Confederation Trail bike rental shop.
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I went into the tourist information centre to ask about where to find some of the Maritime Madness hot sauces we had tried back at the East Point lighthouse while Chris went into the bike shop to get a Presta-compatible pump. The lady in the infocentre told me that a couple had just opened a brand new hot sauce shop on the other side of the river and up the hill a ways. After we’d both cleaned our bike chains, we walked on over to discover that the hot sauce shop was actually the factory store for Maritime Madness hot sauces itself!
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We spent about 45 minutes in the store sampling tons of hot sauces, and burning our tongues off. Eventually we each decided on 4 sauces apiece to each have sent back home. We then asked the girl at Maritime Madness for a recommendation of where to eat, and she told us about a brewery across the street that served PEI “hand pies” with more Maritime Madness hot sauces. Local beer, food with hot sauces, and we were sold, so we went straight over.
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We ordered a couple of flights to try each of the beers they had on tap along with a couple of hand pies and settled in to enjoy our food and drink. The brew pub also had a great view of the Montague harbour.
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As we ate and drank, the will to carry on and do another 30km really withered from us, so Chris decided to use up our extra day and book a hotel in Montague, just up the street from the brewery. After our beers, we walked back over to the train station to retrieve our bikes and make our way to the Awakenings Inn to check-in.
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After check-in and a bit of lounging, we made our way back to the brewery for another round and more hand pies. So good.
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Montague was definitely one of the prettiest towns we had visited on PEI. It’s on steep banks of a valley, giving nice views of the town and had a really quaint, old downtown area that seemed pretty evenly balanced on both sides of the river.
Since we’d cut today short, the plan for the next day made for a relatively short 30km (20mi) ride from Montague to Wood Islands for our last lighthouse, and hopefully the weather would cooperate as we’d be camping when we arrived there.