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May 25, 2007

On a day off, we step into a Summer Guide photo

Journal photo / Bob Thayer
A "shore dinner" with locally harvested lobster, steamers, mussels, corn and chirico at Champlin's, overlooking the rocks at Galilee.

I led projo.com's annual Summer Guide with this photo. There's an elegant Tall Ships photo below it on the page, but this is a scene you can step into. That can be your shore dinner (and a couple of friends' dinners, too, it seems).

Yesterday, after too many long workdays, I needed a day off. So with temperatures headed to the 80s, Joe and I headed for South County.*

And we stepped into that Summer Guide photo. Here's the same spot, the upper deck at Champlin's restaurant in the village of Galilee, at the southern end of Narragansett. Without the food, without the sun reflecting prettily off the ocean, without Bob Thayer's technical prowess, but with a bonus boat called the Whispering Sea and a glimpse of Jerusalem across the channel:

At one point the Block Island ferry slide past us, but by then my fingers were too full of lobster juice to touch my camera.

Right off a boat, the lobster was delicious.

If you're wondering what a lobster costs in this year of scarcity, it was $17.99 there for a 1 1/4-lb boiled lobster, clarified butter, cole slaw and two red potatoes (in lieu of French fries) -- and worth it.

Joe's steamers -- full-belly, soft-shell clams, larger than hard-shell cherrystones, far smaller than quahogs chopped for chowder -- were $10.99, accompanied only by broth to wash off the sand, and melted butter for dipping.

This is not a fancy restaurant -- you line up to order and pay, and get a number that will boom out of speakers when your order is ready to pick up. For a $2 deposit, they'll even let you borrow a nutcracker.

After lunch, we wanted to read for a while overlooking the ocean. We ended up at a spot Ellen Albanese of the Globe described Wednesday in a travel story about Narragansett:

"From the Black Point public fishing area off Ocean Road, a short path through the woods leads to a rocky outcropping overlooking the ocean and remnants of forts used during World War I and World War II to defend the coastline. There is a small parking area and a sign."

Open ocean is beautiful, but hard to photograph. We didn't last long there -- my freckles started to burn.

We ended up under an umbrella with our books and a beer on the back deck of Twin Willows in Saunderstown, probably the last time it will be so quiet until well into October.

Summer starts tonight. Happy Memorial Day weekend.

*South County is a longstanding Rhode Island joke. There is no South County, but it's real and we all know where it is: It's what we call the southern part of the state on the west side of Narragansett Bay. You'll even see South County clam chowder on some menus, alongside Manhattan (red) and New England (white) versions: It's base is clear clam broth.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:08 AM | Permalink