The ninth-ranked team in the country opens at home against USC Saturday night, the county put Lindon Marina under a danger advisory for algae, and the Eagle Mountain food truck rally has two Thursdays left in it
Plus UVU starting class under a president who has been on the job nine days, a free bluegrass set on the grass in Lindon, and a Pleasant Grove burger counter that has been at the same corner since 1968.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
Monday we told you the mudslides took the road to the Diamond Fork trailheads. It is still shut at Monk's Hollow, blocked both before and after the Fifth Water turnoff, and the county has now put the hot springs themselves under a health watch. That plan is off for a while. American Fork Canyon is the one that still works, and it costs six dollars.
Everything else this week is close to home. UVU starts class this morning, the ninth-ranked soccer team in the country plays its home opener Saturday night, and there is exactly one spot on Utah Lake you genuinely should not get into.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- ⚽USC at South Field Saturday, 7pm
- 🚱Lindon Marina went to a danger advisory
- 🌭Two food truck nights left in Eagle Mountain
⭐ The Big One
Pick of the week USC plays at South Field Saturday, and BYU has lost 29 home games there in thirty years
BYU hosts USC at South Field Saturday at seven. The Cougars are ranked ninth in the country, they opened the year by going to Los Angeles and beating UCLA 2-1, and they play at Wisconsin tonight before flying home for this one. Saturday is the first regular-season home match of the year.
South Field is most of the reason to go. BYU is 237-29-13 there since 1995, and in 2023 the program averaged 4,036 fans a match and pulled the highest cumulative attendance in the country. The grandstand seats 4,200 with standing room behind it, it sits just south of the Smith Fieldhouse, and the Wasatch is the backdrop over the far goal.
This is also Jennifer Rockwood's last season. She is the only head coach the program has ever had, she said in June she is retiring when the year ends, and there are ten home matches on the calendar. Saturday is the first.
Our take
Ninth in the country, at home, against USC, in the final season of the only coach this program has ever had. If you have been meaning to take the kids to something at BYU that is not football, this is the one, and you are back in the car by nine.⚠️ Heads up: Tickets are required for anyone two and up in the reserved sections and six and up in general admission, so a toddler rides free but a seven-year-old does not.
$ soccerfamiliesProvo
📰 Around the Valley
Lindon Marina went to a danger advisory, and the whole lake is under a warning
The county health department updated its harmful algal bloom advisories Monday and moved Lindon Marina up to a danger advisory, the most serious level it issues. Utah Lake as a whole stays under a warning advisory, and so do the South Arm and Knoll Beach at Salem Pond, the lower Jordan River, and Big East Lake. Fifth Water Hot Springs is on a health watch. Nothing in the county is closed outright, so the marinas and the beaches are open and the decision is yours to make at the water's edge. Under a warning the state guidance is no swimming and no skiing, keep the dogs out, and clean any fish well and throw the guts away.
UVU starts its fall semester today with a president who has been on the job nine days
Classes begin at Utah Valley University this morning, the first day of a semester that runs to December 4. Jon Anderson took over as the school's eighth president on August 10, nine days ago, after the Utah Board of Higher Education picked him unanimously. He came from Pennsylvania Western University, where he was president, and before that he was provost at Southern Utah University and at Middle Georgia State. He grew up in Bluffdale and started his own schooling at Ricks College, which is now BYU-Idaho. For a campus that is one of the largest in the state, a first day and a first week for the president landing together is a rare thing to watch.
📅 This Week
Music
Skip unless 🎸 Three Nashville songwriters play up the canyon Friday, and every seat is gone
Sundance runs the Bluebird Cafe series in its outdoor amphitheater, a partnership with the Nashville listening room that made Garth Brooks and a long list of others. Friday night is JT Harding, Kristian Bush and Emily Saliers, three writers in a row telling the story behind each song before they play it. Doors at seven, show at eight. It is sold out. The series closes with two more nights on August 28 and 29.
Our take
Skip Friday, because you cannot get in. Put the 28th and the 29th in your phone instead. Sales are final and there are no exchanges for a night you miss, which is a real thing to know before you buy a ticket to a show forty minutes up a canyon.⚠️ Heads up: The amphitheater is outdoors and up the canyon, and the show starts after dark, so the jacket you did not need at eight in Provo is the one you want at ten in Sundance.
$$$ musicdate nightSundance
Food
Worth it 🌭 The Eagle Mountain food truck rally has two Thursdays left in it
Every Thursday since the fourth of June, a row of trucks has parked in the east lot at Cory B. Wride Memorial Park from six to nine. The lineup rotates week to week, so the trucks that were there in July are not necessarily the ones there tomorrow. The season ends August 27, which makes tomorrow and next Thursday the last two.
Our take
Twelve weeks of this and it ends next Thursday, which is the part worth knowing today. Bring a blanket and let the kids run the field while you wait on an order, because that is what this is really for.⚠️ Heads up: The trucks rotate every week, so the one somebody raved about in July may not be there tomorrow.
$ familiesfoodwest side
Music
Worth it 🪕 Lindon puts a bluegrass band on the grass Saturday and charges nothing
Silver City Pink plays the Sounds of Summer series at Lindon City Center Park on Saturday at seven, bluegrass and folk. The series is free, it has been running since late July, and after Saturday there are two more: Stevens Party with Three's Company on the 29th and the Greg Simpson Band on September 5. The city's only instruction is to bring a blanket or a chair.
Our take
A free bluegrass set on a lawn twelve minutes up State Street is the lowest-effort good night of the week. Nobody checks a ticket, the kids can lie down, and if it is a bust you drove twelve minutes.⚠️ Heads up: There is no covered seating at City Center Park, so an afternoon thunderhead over Timp is the whole plan.
free freemusicLindon
Sports
Book now 🏓 A charity pickleball tournament in Orem starts you with an hour of lessons
Meals, Wheels & Paddles runs Saturday from eleven at Club Pickleball USA on Sandhill Road, with brackets at the intermediate and advanced levels. What makes it different from the rest of the tournament calendar is the hour of instruction from the club's Junior Pros for anyone who has never played or wants to sharpen up before stepping on a court. Entry money goes to the cause.
Our take
Brackets get set before the doors open, so this is one of the few things in the issue where Saturday morning is already too late to decide. Sign up today if the idea appeals at all.⚠️ Heads up: The brackets are intermediate and advanced only, so a true beginner is signing up for the lesson hour and not for a bracket.
$$ sportscharityOrem
Arts
Worth it 🧵 Pleasant Grove hands its library over to costume designers Saturday afternoon
The Pleasant Grove library runs a cosplay workshop Saturday from 2:30 to five, where working designers walk through how to make the next build better. It is for ages fourteen and up, which is unusual for a library craft session and tells you the level it is pitched at.
Our take
Fourteen and up means this is not a kids craft table with glue sticks. If there is a teenager in your house who has been sewing armor out of foam since June, somebody in that room has already solved the problem they are on.⚠️ Heads up: The age floor is fourteen, so a younger sibling who also wants in is not getting in.
free teensfreePleasant Grove
🏟️ The Scoreboard
Eleven wins is a club record, and it came with a penalty in the 79th
Utah beat Bay FC 3-2 at America First Field on Friday to set a new club record for wins in a season. It was 2-2 with ten minutes left before Utah took the lead from the spot. They sit second in the league on 36 points.
The Cougars open the year ranked 14th, the second-best preseason number in program history
The preseason AP Top 25 came out Monday with BYU at 14 and Utah at 21. Running back LJ Martin was named a second-team preseason AP All-American. Nobody has played anybody yet, so the number is a guess, but it is the highest guess anyone has made about this program in a long time.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it Purple Turtle, Pleasant Grove
It has been at the corner of State Street and 100 East since January of 1968, which is a long time for a burger counter in a valley that tears down and rebuilds everything. Lloyd Ash opened it after a stretch of nights where he kept picturing the place, and the building has never moved.
Order the battered fries. They are the thing people actually drive there for, crispy the way a fry gets when somebody batters it instead of just freezing it, and they go with a shake better than they have any business going with a shake. The onion rings run on the same batter if you would rather.
Our take
Fifty-eight years at one corner. That is the whole pitch. Get the fries, get a shake, and notice how many people in line clearly grew up doing exactly this.⚠️ Heads up: Closed all day Sunday, which is the day most people finally have a free afternoon to go looking for a burger.
$ burgerskidsPleasant Grove
🌲 Get Outside
Worth it Diamond Fork is still shut, so American Fork Canyon is the canyon that works this week
Diamond Fork Road has been closed at Monk's Hollow since Friday, with mud and debris blocking the road both before and after the Fifth Water Hot Springs trailhead, and the county has now put the springs themselves under a health watch for algae. Two separate reasons to point the car somewhere else.
American Fork Canyon is that somewhere else. Six dollars a vehicle at the booth on SR-92 buys three days, and any America the Beautiful pass covers it instead. Tibble Fork Reservoir is a left at the brown sign once you are up past Highland, and it has paved paths, picnic tables, restrooms and a real parking lot, which is more than most of the water in this county offers.
Our take
Tibble Fork is the version of a mountain lake you can do with a stroller and a cooler, which is why the lot is a scene on a Saturday. Go on a weekday evening instead and you get most of it to yourself.⚠️ Heads up: Cell service thins out fast past the fee booth, so pull up whatever map or trail notes you want while you are still down in Highland.
$ outdoorsfamiliesAmerican Fork
🎟️ Also Happening
🎬 Moonrise Kingdom on a Friday night
Friday from six to eight at the Orem library, free, and a Wes Anderson movie is a strange and good thing to watch in a library.
♟️ A back-to-school chess tournament
Saturday morning at 10:30 at the Spanish Fork library, Swiss format, walk in and play.
👑 Miss Provo and Miss Liberty Belle
Saturday at seven at the Covey Center in downtown Provo, the scholarship competition.
📰 Valley News
The ten biggest fires in Utah this year have run up a $217 million bill
Friday we told you Utah had spent about $33 million fighting fire this year. Here is the fuller number: state forestry officials now put the total cost of fighting Utah's ten largest fires at nearly $217 million, with the state expecting to cover about $37.9 million of it. Two hundred properties have burned, and 184 of those came from the Cottonwood Fire in Beaver County alone. FEMA granted assistance on five of the largest fires, reimbursing up to 75 percent of the state's costs, and Utah expects roughly $18.2 million back. It is the worst fire season here in nearly two decades, and it is not over.
The state's reservoirs are 54 percent full, and that is 13 points below normal
The Division of Water Resources put out its drought update last Thursday with statewide reservoir storage averaging 54 percent full. That is 13 percentage points below normal for the middle of August and 16 points below where the same reservoirs sat a year ago. The drop between May and July was the steep part, and it traces back to a thin snowpack that never produced much runoff. Storage is the buffer that carries the state into next spring, so a number this low in August is really a statement about next year.
Provo filled 9,000 sandbags and sent them to towns sitting below burn scars
Ahead of monsoon rain forecast over central Utah, Provo's public works and parks crews filled and delivered roughly 9,000 sandbags to communities threatened by flooding off this summer's burn scars. The city sent another 32,000 empty bags, 40 Jersey barriers, 50 super sacks and other equipment on top of that. Burn scars shed water instead of absorbing it and stay unstable for years, which is why a modest storm over one can put mud in somebody's living room. Provo knows the pattern firsthand from the Buckley Draw scar on its own south end.
Bank of Utah opened a branch in Spanish Fork, its fifth in the county
Bank of Utah cut the ribbon on a full-service branch at 1279 N Canyon Creek Parkway in Spanish Fork on August 10, joining its existing offices in Lindon, Orem and Provo. The branch handles personal and business banking, home loans, treasury management and investment services, with Lane Deason running it as branch manager. A Lehi branch is next, with a ribbon-cutting set for late this month. South county has been adding rooftops for years without adding much in the way of the ordinary commercial services that follow them, and this is one of those catching up.
The Debate
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Nominate a neighbor →That is the middle of the week. First whistle is seven Saturday at South Field, the trucks pull into Cory Wride at six tomorrow night, and Silver City Pink starts at seven Saturday on the grass in Lindon.
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