Lindon stacks its whole finale into Saturday, from a 7:30 pancake breakfast to fireworks over Pheasant Brook, the Alpine rodeo has already sold out two of its three nights, and Provo's airport is halfway through the build that takes it to ten gates
Plus a puppet show at the Springville gazebo on Monday, four bands nobody knows yet for ten dollars at Velour, a Lehi coffee shop that opens at seven every day including most holidays, and a Pleasant Grove splash pad built around a climbable Viking ship.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
The city celebrations that have run this end of the county since the middle of July finish on Saturday, and Lindon put everything it had left into one date. After that the calendar goes quiet for a week until Alpine's rodeo weekend, which has already sold out two of its three nights. If you were waiting for the last easy Saturday before school starts, this is it.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- 🎆Lindon's finale, from 7:30am to fireworks
- 🤠Alpine's rodeo is down to Saturday seats
- ✈️Provo Airport's second phase and ten gates
⭐ The Big One
Pick of the week Lindon spends all of Saturday closing out its week, and the last of it goes up over Pheasant Brook
Lindon Days ends Saturday after eight days, and the city put the entire finale on one date. It opens at 7:30 in the morning with a community pancake breakfast at 90 North State: pancakes, sausage, fruit, no charge, cooked and served by the crews who work out of that building.
The middle of the day splits between two parks. Check-in for the 11th Annual Cardboard Boat Regatta runs 8 to 9 at the Lindon Aquatics Center with racing at nine, and the rules are strict about the build: two people, cardboard and duct tape and nothing else, life jackets required, spectators free. The car show takes City Center Park on 200 North State from 10 to 2 with free registration, chalk art going down on the sidewalk around the park, and Nachos Live, Taco Burrito Express and Stella's Ice Cream parked alongside. Free swim runs 11 to 6 for Lindon residents with proof of address, and at 1:30 the Bank of Utah and the Little Miss Lindon royalty throw eight hundred dollars in dimes into the pool across four age groups.
The night moves to Pheasant Brook Park at 400 North 800 West. Kids aged 5 to 17 run their own booths at the Children's Entrepreneur Market from five to eight, Pop-Up Play sets out lawn games beside it, eight food trucks open at five, the Flashback Brothers play fifties through eighties covers at 8:30, and the fireworks go up when the band finishes.
Our take
Eight hundred dollars in dimes going into a public pool at 1:30 on a Saturday afternoon tells you what kind of celebration this is. The regatta is in its eleventh year and the boats are genuinely terrible, which is the whole appeal. Lindon gets driven through more than it gets driven to, and this is the one day a year that flips, right up until the fireworks close out the last city celebration on this end of the county before the Alpine rodeo weekend takes over on the 13th.⚠️ Heads up: Free swim is for Lindon residents with proof of address and entry is not guaranteed once the pool fills, so anyone coming in from outside should plan on a punch pass or paying at the door during regular hours.
free familiesfreeLindon
📰 Around the Valley
Provo's airport is halfway through the build that takes it to ten gates
Provo Airport is in the second phase of a three-year terminal expansion, the North Concourse Addition, which adds three gates and brings the count to eight when it opens. That phase is scheduled to be operational by December 2027, and a matching south-side addition takes the terminal to ten gates by late 2028. The airport handled close to 900,000 passengers in 2024 and has served more than 3.5 million since the current commercial terminal opened in July 2022. Utah County pledged $78 million of roughly $140 million in total funding, with the balance coming from the state, the FAA and local sources.
More than 40 percent of Utah is now in extreme or exceptional drought
The U.S. Drought Monitor moved another two percentage points of the state into its two worst categories this week, putting over 40 percent of Utah in extreme or exceptional drought, and close to 95 percent in at least severe drought. Six reservoirs around the state have fallen to 15 percent of capacity or less, with Gunnison Reservoir in Sanpete County sitting at 2 percent. Lake Powell is holding at 24 percent even after extra releases upstream at Flaming Gorge pushed additional water downstream this year. The southern arm of the Great Salt Lake has dropped about a foot below its spring peak, back inside the elevation range the state classifies as causing serious adverse effects.
📅 This Week
Rodeo
Book now 🤠 Two of the three Alpine rodeo nights are already gone
The Alpine Rodeo runs Thursday the 13th through Saturday the 15th at the Lambert Park Rodeo Grounds, tucked under Box Elder Peak at the top of town, and it is the centerpiece of the back half of Alpine Days. Each night opens with mutton bustin' before professional cowboys work through eight events. Thursday and Friday are sold out and Saturday is close to it. The Alpine Days website is the only official place tickets come from, and ticket problems go to alpinerodeo@alpineut.gov.
Our take
Two of three nights sold out with a week still to go says more about how small those grounds are than about how famous the rodeo is, and that is exactly the argument for going. Alpine sits at the end of a road most of the county never has a reason to drive, and the arena is far enough up that the light is coming off Box Elder Peak while the stock is still loading. Saturday is what is left. Take Saturday.⚠️ Heads up: Nearly every other site selling this rodeo is a resale operation with resale prices, and the city has said its own website is the only official source.
$$ rodeofamiliesnorth county
Music
Worth it 🎸 Velour puts four bands nobody knows yet on stage for ten dollars
New Band Showcase #2 runs Thursday the 13th at Velour on 135 North University Avenue in downtown Provo, with a 7:30 start and four acts on the bill: Redline, Minivan, Church of Julia and Warm October. Tickets are $10 at face and $12.24 once the online fees land. It is the second of these showcases this month, after the first one ran on the 6th.
Our take
Velour built its whole reputation on rooms exactly like this one, back when the names on the poster meant nothing to anyone. Ten dollars is roughly what a drive-thru dinner costs and you get four sets out of it, and the odds that one of the four turns into something are better here than anywhere else in the county.⚠️ Heads up: It is standing room with a small balcony and nothing assigned, so where you end up is decided entirely by when you walk in.
$ musiccheapProvo
Family
Worth it 🎭 Springville's gazebo has puppets on Monday night
Gazebo Gatherings runs every Monday through the summer at the gazebo in Civic Center Park, 110 South Main in Springville, and Monday the 10th is McMazing Puppetry at seven. It is free, outdoors, and it shares the park with the Springville farmers market, which is running at the same time.
Our take
Puppetry is the one summer-series booking that reliably holds a four-year-old all the way to the end, and Springville has the sense to put it on the same night the market is already there. Dinner and the show and the drive home all happen inside two hours.⚠️ Heads up: The gazebo has no seating of its own. A blanket on the grass is the entire arrangement, and the grass fills in front of the steps first.
free familiesfreeSpringville
Market
Worth it 🍑 The Spanish Fork market has turned over to peaches and corn
The Spanish Fork Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8 to 1 in the Thurber building parking lot at 40 South Main, and it keeps going every Saturday through October 31. August is when the tables change over from early greens to peaches, corn, tomatoes and melons off the south-end farms.
Our take
Nobody drives to a farmers market in June for the produce, they drive for the outing. August is the month that flips, and the Spanish Fork version has the advantage of sitting in the middle of the farms it is selling.⚠️ Heads up: It closes at one sharp and the Thurber lot is not large, so a late arrival means parking on Main and walking back.
free familiesfoodsouth county
Science
Skip unless 🔬 Super STEM Saturdays takes over the Museum of Natural Curiosity
Thanksgiving Point runs Super STEM Saturdays at the Museum of Natural Curiosity in Lehi on Friday the 14th from 3 to 8 and Saturday the 15th from 10 to 6. This round is themed around the science of magic, with activity tables on spells, potions, crystals and levitation and the physics sitting underneath each one. Tickets go through Thanksgiving Point.
Our take
Skip unless you already hold a Thanksgiving Point membership, in which case go on Friday and stay an hour. This lands on the last weekend before the districts go back on the 18th and 19th, which is the single busiest the museum gets all summer, and paying full admission to stand in line behind a levitation table is a worse afternoon than the theme suggests.⚠️ Heads up: The activity tables sit inside the museum's regular footprint, so this is not a separate room you can duck into and out of once the crowd builds.
$$$ familieskidsnorth county
🏟️ The Scoreboard
A shootout point went the wrong way Tuesday, and Atlante comes Saturday
If you caught Monday's issue flagging the Tigres match, here is how it landed. RSL drew Liga MX side Tigres UANL 1-1 in front of 16,155 at America First Field to open Leagues Cup, then lost the shootout 6-5 when Jesus Garza converted in sudden death. Pablo Ruiz got the equalizer before halftime, and RSL out-shot Tigres 16-12 without finding a second.
Nine straight losses, and Oklahoma City is still in town
The Bees dropped their ninth consecutive game on Wednesday, a 12-2 loss to the Oklahoma City Comets at The Ballpark at America First Square in South Jordan. That ties the nine-game slide they had last season between May 25 and June 4. The Comets came in on a run of their own and the series carries through Sunday.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it Porch Coffee, Lehi
Porch Coffee sits at 380 East Main Street in Lehi and opened its doors in January after a couple of months running out of a truck. The beans come from Caffe Ibis in Logan, the syrups and the pastries are made in house, and the food menu stays deliberately short at bagels and toast. Hours are 7 to 5, seven days a week, including most holidays. Manager Libby Brown describes the interior as fun and funky on purpose, which is a fair way to put a room that was clearly built by people who did not want it to look like anywhere else.
Our take
Everything interesting in Lehi has spent a decade getting built two miles north on the freeway side, so an independent shop betting on the old Main Street is worth rewarding on principle before you even taste anything. Order it with one of the house syrups rather than a straight drip. That is where the work went.⚠️ Heads up: Weekends are when the room fills with people working and studying and staying, so a table is a weekday-morning proposition.
$ coffeecheapLehi
👨👩👧 Family & Free
Worth it The splash pad with a climbable Viking ship, and it costs nothing
Cook Family Park sits at 724 North 600 West in Pleasant Grove, open dawn to 10pm with no entry fee. The splash pad is built around a Viking ship kids can climb, and the rest of the park carries a bike pump track, a skate park, two futsal fields and a basketball court, with Timpanogos filling the view east. Toddlers through about ten get the most out of the water; the pump track and the skate bowl will hold older kids for as long as you are willing to sit there.
Our take
Free water in August is the whole currency of parenting right now, and the rare thing here is having a splash pad for the small one and a pump track for the big one inside the same line of sight. Bring towels and a full change of clothes, because there is no shade structure over the water and nothing dries in the shade that does not exist.⚠️ Heads up: No dogs anywhere in this park, at all. Bikes, scooters and skateboards are also out on the playground and the splash pad, and belong in the pump track and skate area only.
free familiesfreePleasant Grove
🎟️ Also Happening
🗣️ Ti Voz Importa in Provo
Provo's third annual Spanish-language community night runs Monday at six in the library ballroom, with cultural performances, food vendors and resource booths.
🎶 Peter Breinholt at the Sundance amphitheater
Doors at seven and music at eight on Saturday the 15th up the canyon, his return to that stage after roughly two decades away.
🎻 Creedence and John Prine tribute night in Springville
Two tribute bands take the Springville stage at seven on Saturday the 15th.
📰 Valley News
NASA put a group of BYU students on the ground in Namibia and Alaska
NASA has pulled BYU researchers onto the science team preparing for Dragonfly, the rotorcraft mission scheduled to launch in July 2028 and fly around Titan, Saturn's largest moon. BYU geology professor Jani Radebaugh sits on that team, and the work is about reading dunes: Titan is covered in them, and nobody can pick a landing site without understanding how they are shaped and what sits underneath. Undergraduate Logan Peatross has been working the towering dunes of Namibia to compare their geometry with Titan's. Master's student Emma Gosselin has been running ground-penetrating radar over the ice-covered Great Kobuk Sand Dunes in Alaska to find deep pockets of water.
Back-to-school supplies now average $173.45 a child
Classrooms across the county fill back up in under two weeks, and the bill to get a kid there has moved. Supplies are up 7.7 percent year over year to an average of $173.45 per child, and the lunch-box side is up about 11 percent. The steepest single jumps are the ones parents notice at the register: lunch boxes up 27 percent, notebooks and paper and tissues up around 20 percent, sandwich bread up 22 percent. Tariffs are doing most of the work, from pencils and crayons made in Brazil, China, Mexico and India to steel and aluminum costs landing on domestic producers. Roughly half of parents now expect to take on debt to cover the season, against 34 percent two years ago.
Vineyard's Utah City is filling in a 12-acre waterfront greenbelt
The 700-acre Utah City development on the east shore of Utah Lake has moved from renderings to open doors this year. Bella's Market is serving the earliest residents and the wider Vineyard area, the Berliner play area opened in April with a climbable hot-air balloon structure, and Fini Pizza took a corner of it this summer. The bigger piece is the Greenline, a 12-acre waterfront park planned to carry more than 1,000 trees from the lakeshore into the middle of the development, with a dog park, sand volleyball courts, a playground and a concert venue folded into it. Vineyard has gone from a few hundred residents to more than 15,000 in under a decade, which is the pressure this is being built against.
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 is the weekend. Get to Pheasant Brook by five if you want parking, buy the Alpine Saturday seats before they go, and take the peaches home from Spanish Fork before the market packs down at one.
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 thinks nothing happens here in August.
— The Provo FOMO crew
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