Trading Fishing for Shopping & Zorbaz for Dorset
It’s Monday morning, the 4th of July.
Looking through the raindrops on the window, we can see white caps on the lake. We usually have a couple days of fishing before the weather is uncooperative, but today’s weather is not inline with our fishing plans. Although it’s only Monday, the ladies declare it a “Walker Day” (i.e. shopping in the nearby lake town of Walker). Since the rest of the week looks like great days to spend at the lake, we might as well get our shopping in today!
Beth, Phyllis, Leah, Chloe, Elise, Zeke (E’s BF), and I pile into Beth’s suburban and head for Walker. We run into Deb, Melissa, Barb, Erin & Leah in town. Since many stores will be closing early for the 4th, Chloe has compiled a list to make sure we hit all of our favorites before they close. We dodge the crowds which begin to gather for the town’s parade at 2:00. We find some new “Up North” sweatshirts and t-shirts, kitchen gadgets, and other little trinkets, and finish up in Walker by around 3:00.
Since we complete our “must see” list early, we decide to go to Park Rapids as well. Several of the shops there are closed for the holiday also, but we locate some great finds at Kathryn’s on Main (my favorite dishtowels), Beagle and Wolf Books and Bindery (books for Chloe), and Ben Franklin (Leah’s BIGGEST find!).
As we finish up our shopping day, the guys (Tom, Bill, William & Zach) are making their way down to meet us at Zorbaz for our annual pizza tradition. As we approach the restaurant, we receive a text from Tom: Electrical issues. No food!!
We can’t believe it, but we are not going to get our Zorbaz pizza tonight! We are all bummed, but making lemonade out of life’s lemons (or in our case, margaritas out of limes), we opt for the Mexican restaurant, Companeros, in the town of Dorset instead. Dorset, Minnesota, besides having had a couple of 3-year-old mayors, claims to be “The Restaurant Capital of the World” with a population of 22 and four restaurants.
We’ve driven through Dorset on our way to Zorbaz year after year for the past many years! Now we can say we’ve eaten there–in the Restaurant Capital of the World!
Even though things don’t always go according to plan, you can bet we won’t forget the year we had to skip Zorbaz, but got to eat in Dorset instead!