Town #52 Chaplin

Thursday, September 17, 2009
Diana's Pool * Ribbits

A visit to Chaplin’s town website made no mention of anything of significance to see in that small town. Somewhere, however, in our collection of clippings and notes, we recalled Diana’s Pool was a natural pool in the Natchaug River. It’s located off Rt. 198 right near a bridge that crosses over that river.

We parked in a parking lot on a dead end street for a short trek. The water was a little low since we haven’t had much rain recently, but the rock ledge formations are interestingly carved out by the river. Near the bridge, we thought we were looking at the pool, but after exploring a bit and heading a bit north on the rocky shore and woods, we discovered Diana’s Pool upstream a short distance. The noise of the water was loud enough, considering the low volume of water, and we could imagine the sounds of rushing water if there was a full flow. It would be fun to come back after a good rain or a winter snow melt as we know from our own Fenton River.

There are various legends regarding the naming of the pool. One is that a young girl’s heart was broken by her lover and Diana jumped off a high ledge to her death; or she slipped on the tears she cried. Or maybe the pool was just named after the Diana family who owned the pool. Take your pick.

For lunch, we headed for lunch toward Rt. 6. We had four choices from our web search and we spotted Ribbits first (no website, but various reviews on the web). The place was clean and the décor had a neat frog theme. We were there around 1:00 and the place wasn’t at all busy—they do lunch and dinners. The menu is extensive. Jan had a toasted chicken salad sandwich and French fries and I had a special, grilled chicken cordon bleu sandwich with sweet potato fries. ($20) (Bob)