Alpine Days starts loading this week and unloads next, Sundance puts three Utah bands on the amphitheater stage Saturday night, and Payson's Salmon Supper was gone before most people knew it was on sale
Plus peak peach week at the Wednesday market in Orem, a free art stroll through downtown Provo on Friday, an American Fork software company that sold for four hundred million, and ice you can skate on while the valley bakes.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
Three city celebrations closed out over the weekend and Alpine has the last one, which makes this the odd week where the calendar looks quiet and the buying does not. Rodeo seats, carnival wristbands and race entries for next week are all priced to reward whoever moves first, and the county's biggest sold-out dinner already proved the point. In between there's a Wednesday market at its August peak, a free stroll through downtown Provo on Friday, and a canyon amphitheater show Saturday night that Sundance has never run before.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- 🎪Alpine Days: what to buy this week for next
- 🎸Three Utah bands at the Sundance amphitheater
- 🐟Why Payson's Salmon Supper is already gone
⭐ The Big One
Book now Alpine Days is the county's last city celebration, and the week you plan it is this one
Alpine runs its city days August 8 through 15 under an America250 banner, and almost everything that costs money goes on sale or goes up in price before the festival actually starts. The pickleball tournament at Creekside and Burgess Parks is underway now through Saturday. The Cedar Hills golf scramble on the 8th already filled. What's still open that morning is the mountain bike race at Lambert Park, four courses by difficulty, $15 a racer, rolling out at 7:30 while the air is still worth breathing.
The payoff week starts Monday the 10th. Yoga on the Creekside grass at eight, an auto show and a fire department barbecue Monday evening, stargazing with the Utah Valley Astronomy Club at the Lambert Park bowery Tuesday night, Cool Runnings on a screen in the park Wednesday at dusk. Rodeo runs Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 with gates at 6:15 and mutton bustin' at 6:45. The carnival opens Friday at noon, and a wristband bought ahead is $35 against $40 at the gate.
Saturday the 15th is the whole thing at once: a 5K out of Burgess Park at seven, the parade down Main at nine with the route closing to traffic at 8:15, a free quilt show and Relic Hall tours through the afternoon, music on the Creekside lawn from 4:30, and about twenty minutes of fireworks at ten. Alpine sits at the top of the county under the Timpanogos ridgeline, roughly 35 minutes north of Provo, and most people down here have never driven up for it.
Our take
Alpine is the last town in the county still holding its summer party, and it schedules like a place that knows exactly how hot August is. The hard stuff runs before eight in the morning or after eight at night, and the long middle of the day gets a quilt show and an air-conditioned Relic Hall. We'd take the Friday carnival over the Saturday one, because noon to four that day puts every ride at a single ticket and the crowd hasn't found the park yet.⚠️ Heads up: The golf scramble and the youth market both filled before the festival opened, so the two things still taking entries this week are the mountain bike race and the pickleball brackets.
$ familiesfreenorth county
📰 Around the Valley
American Fork's Domo is selling its business for $400 million
Domo, the cloud analytics company that has anchored American Fork's stretch of the tech corridor since 2010, agreed to sell substantially all of its operating assets to Progress Software for about $400 million in cash, with its employees moving over as part of the deal. Josh James founded Domo after selling Omniture to Adobe for $1.8 billion in 2009, and he is the person who put the phrase Silicon Slopes on the region in the first place. The number is a long way down from the company's peak, when a 2017 funding round valued it north of $2 billion. Progress is buying the operating business rather than the public company, so the entity now called Domo is expected to continue under a new name and ticker once the transaction closes in Progress's fourth fiscal quarter.
A 138-bed shelter campus is coming to Orem, with ground breaking in October
The Refuge Utah, which has served Utah, Wasatch and Juab counties since 1984, will break ground in October on an emergency shelter and transitional housing campus in Orem. The plan puts 138 emergency beds with flexible family space alongside 12 transitional housing units and a services center for therapy, advocacy, children's programming and classes. The organization runs a 25-bed shelter today and turned away 450 requests for shelter last year because it had nowhere to put people. A capital campaign is opening alongside the groundbreaking to fund the build.
📅 This Week
Music
Pick of the week 🎸 Sundance puts three Utah bands on the amphitheater stage Saturday, and it has never done this one before
The Hoot and Holler Festival is new to the Sundance calendar this year, and it lands Saturday night at the resort's outdoor amphitheater with Michelle Moonshine and Co, James Hardy and The Fire, and Bad Frances. The range runs from country and bluegrass through decades of rock covers, which is a lot more elastic than the single-headliner shows the amphitheater usually books. Doors open at six and the music starts at seven. Tickets go through the resort.
Our take
Sundance has spent this summer booking one big name at a time into that amphitheater, so a night with three working Utah bands on it is a different proposition and a cheaper one. Michelle Moonshine has been playing rooms around this state long enough that the crowd sings back at her, and an outdoor stage under a mountain is where that lands best.⚠️ Heads up: The amphitheater is slopeside and open to the sky, and the temperature falls off a cliff once the sun drops behind the ridge around nine.
$$$ musicdate nightcanyon
Food
Worth it 🍑 The Orem market hits its best Wednesday of the year
The Sunset Farmers Market runs Wednesday evening from five to nine at Orem City Center Park with roughly 200 vendors, and the first full week of August is when the produce stops being a preview and becomes the point. Peaches, tomatoes, sweet corn and melons all land at once. Getting in costs nothing.
Our take
Two hundred vendors is a real market rather than a craft fair with a vegetable table, and August is the four-week stretch that justifies the whole season. Bring more cash than you think and a box for the car, because a flat of peaches does not survive a trunk in this heat.⚠️ Heads up: The City Center Park lot fills close to six, and the overflow leaves you three blocks out carrying melons.
Free foodfamiliesOrem
Arts
Worth it
🎨 Downtown Provo opens its galleries Friday night for free
The Provo Art Stroll takes over the downtown historic district on the first Friday of the month, and August's runs from six to nine. Galleries and shops along the Center Street blocks stay open late with work on the walls and people standing next to it who made it. There is no ticket and no registration.
Our take
First Friday downtown is the cheapest good evening in the county and it works whether you know anything about art or nothing at all. Six o'clock in early August is still warm on the sidewalk, so treat the first hour as the browse and the last one as the part where you end up in a shop you'd walked past for years.⚠️ Heads up: Center Street parking turns over slowly on a Friday evening, so the garage a block off is faster than circling for a meter.
Free freedate nightProvo
Community
Skip this year, plan next
🐟 Payson's Salmon Supper is Friday, and you cannot get in
The 72nd Salmon Supper runs Friday from four to eight at Memorial Park on 300 South Main Street in Payson, with salmon grilled over dried fruit wood fires, a baked potato, corn on the cob, salad, a roll and a cookie for $25 a plate. Entertainment and a souvenir booth come with it. Tickets went on sale June 1 at nine in the morning through the city's recreation site, and the whole thing is sold out.
Our take
Seventy-two years in, a small city at the south end of this county still sells out a fish dinner in a park faster than most Utah concerts move tickets. The fruit-wood fires are the reason people drive down for it and the reason it cannot scale. If you want in, the move is the calendar reminder, and if you're already going, Payson's Main Street is worth walking before four.⚠️ Heads up: Memorial Park will look busy Friday evening whether or not you have a ticket, so do not drive down on the theory that a few plates always turn up at the door.
$$ south countytraditionPayson
Community
Worth it
🎤 Lehi's Sunday concerts have two nights left
Arts in the Park runs Sunday evenings at 7:30 through the summer at Margaret Wines Park on 500 North Center Street in Lehi, and the series wraps on the 16th. It costs nothing and it leans on Utah performers rather than touring acts. Last Sunday was Lehi's own Alivia Hadfield, an independent country-pop songwriter who grew up in town.
Our take
Lehi books this series out of its own zip code most weeks, which means you get a songwriter whose parents are standing forty feet away rather than a covers band on a circuit. The park is small enough that a blanket halfway back is a good seat.⚠️ Heads up: Only two Sundays remain before the series closes on the 16th, and the September version of this does not exist.
Free freemusicLehi
🏟️ The Scoreboard
A road point in St. Louis, and a Liga MX heavyweight at home Tuesday
RSL drew 1-1 at St. Louis on Saturday with Sergi Solans scoring in the 60th before Marcel Hartel answered in the 72nd, which ended a two-game road losing run without quite ending the road winless one. Zavier Gozo sat out with a hip strain from the All-Star Game and Morgan Guilavogui served his suspension. Tigres UANL comes to Sandy on Tuesday for the Leagues Cup.
Fall camp is underway, and Utah Tech visits on September 5
BYU begins fall practice this week off a 12-2 finish, an 8-1 Big 12 record, the program's first trip to the conference title game, and a Pop-Tarts Bowl comeback that beat Georgia Tech 25-21 for win number twelve. Only four other teams in school history have won that many in a season.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it Strap Tank, Springville
This one sits off the freeway on the west side of Springville in a 10,000 square foot room that seats 300, and the kitchen leans hearty toward a bison burger and a plate of fish and chips. The name comes from a 1907 Strap Tank Harley-Davidson, and the actual machine lives in the Legends Motorcycle museum across the parking lot, widely regarded as the best unrestored example anywhere, still wearing its original paint, engine, frame and tires, surrounded by dozens of other rare bikes. Doors are open Monday through Saturday from 11:30 to nine and Sunday from 11:30 to eight.
Our take
You order the bison burger and you stay for the parking lot, which is a strange sentence about a restaurant until you have walked into Legends. A hundred-and-nineteen-year-old motorcycle that nobody has ever restored is the kind of thing a valley this size is not supposed to have sitting behind a burger joint in Springville.⚠️ Heads up: The Springville room and the Lehi one share a name and a menu but not an address, so the museum only pairs with this one.
$$ dinnergroupsSpringville
👨👩👧 Family & Free
Worth it There is ice in Provo, and it costs six dollars
Peaks Ice Arena on Seven Peaks Boulevard was built for the 2002 Games and it still runs public skate sessions year round. Admission is $6 for anyone three and up and $5 for seniors 62 and over, with skate rental another $4. The building runs Monday through Saturday and is closed Sundays. Session times shift around the hockey and figure schedule, so the arena posts each day's public skate hours on its own calendar.
Our take
Every August a version of this same conversation happens in a hot kitchen somewhere in this county, and the answer sitting fifteen minutes away is an Olympic rink most families have only driven past. Kids who have run out of patience for splash pads will skate badly for two hours and sleep hard afterward.⚠️ Heads up: Public skate times move week to week around the ice schedule, and the building takes Sundays off entirely.
$ familiesindoorsProvo
🎟️ Also Happening
🚒 National Night Out
Neighborhood block parties with fire and police crews land Tuesday evening at parks across the county, Orem's at City Center Park.
👵 Grandparent's Week at Thanksgiving Point
The discovery centers in Lehi run grandparent programming through Saturday.
🚵 The Lambert Park mountain bike race
Four courses by difficulty roll out at 7:30 Saturday morning in Alpine for $15.
📰 Valley News
The Springville to Spanish Fork widening is 85 percent done
UDOT's $133 million rebuild of I-15 between Main Street in Spanish Fork and SR-51 in Springville has passed 85 percent complete and is on track to finish late this year. The new interchange at Dry Creek Parkway, the road formerly signed as 1600 South and 2700 North, opened its ramps last month, so drivers can now get onto northbound I-15 there and exit from both directions. The rest of the work widens the corridor to two lanes each way and adds a shared-use path, a bridge over the Union Pacific Sharp Line, an upgraded Tintic Railroad crossing and a noise wall. Wadsworth Brothers is building the second phase after Sunroc handled the first.
The Huntsman cancer center rising in Vineyard is a 272,000 square foot build
Construction is underway on Huntsman Cancer Institute's second comprehensive cancer center, going up in Vineyard as part of the Utah City development on the east shore of Utah Lake. The building runs 272,000 square feet and is scheduled to open in fall 2028, carrying multidisciplinary clinics, radiation oncology, cancer imaging, infusion, a pharmacy and an acute care clinic in its first phase. At $400 million for site work and construction, it is the largest single investment in the institute's history, and the first phase is projected to employ roughly 450 people across clinical care and research. For patients on this end of the valley, the practical change is not having to drive to the foothills above Salt Lake for treatment.
Classes are back on August 18, and the districts do not share a start date
Nebo goes back first on August 18, with Alpine and Provo City both following on the 19th. Kindergarten runs on its own clock in two of them: Alpine holds assessment days from the 19th through the 24th and brings its kindergartners in on the 25th, while Provo starts its own on the 26th. That spread matters if your household straddles district lines, which plenty do along the Orem and Vineyard edges and out past Lehi. Two weeks out is also when the morning commute quietly changes, since school traffic returns to State Street and Geneva Road well before the university crowd does.
The Debate
💙 Good Neighbor
Nominate the Valley's quiet MVPs
Every issue we spotlight one neighbor, teacher, coach, or cause quietly making the Valley better, plus an easy way to pitch in. Know someone who deserves it? Send them our way.
Nominate a neighbor →That's the week. Buy the Alpine carnival wristbands before Friday, get to the Orem market by five if you want peaches, and set the June reminder for Payson.
Tell us what we missed. Reply with the openings, events, and good-neighbor stories your corner of the Valley should know about.
Forward this to whoever still hasn't driven up to Alpine.
— The Provo FOMO crew
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