Nebo goes back Tuesday and the rest of the valley Wednesday, a Bolivian carnaval parade opens a free Saturday festival at the Orchard in Orem, and Tyson is closing the Eagle Mountain plant that employs 723 people
Plus on-demand UTA vans that went live across nine north-county cities Sunday, mudslides shutting the road to the Diamond Fork trailheads, and a Payson cafe that hands its stage to whoever shows up.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
Friday we made you choose between the rodeo in Alpine and the 1812 Overture on the grass in Orem, and now both are gone for the year. What is left is the turn. Nebo goes back tomorrow, Alpine and Provo City go back Wednesday, and by Thursday the roads at 8 a.m. belong to somebody else again.
So this is a short week to get something in. The good news is that most of what is worth doing costs nothing: a free festival Saturday, a free concert downtown Friday, a movie on the grass out west, and a museum in a mansion that never charges anybody.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- 💃A carnaval parade opens the Orchard at three Saturday
- 🏭Tyson is closing Eagle Mountain, 723 jobs
- 🚐On-demand UTA vans, nine cities, $2.50
⭐ The Big One
Pick of the week A carnaval parade opens the Orchard at three Saturday, and nothing about the day costs money
Bolivian Fest runs Saturday from three to nine at The Orchard at University Place in Orem, put on by the El Chasqui Foundation with the mall. It opens with a Carnaval parade that comes through University Place itself, dancers in full costume moving past the storefronts, and that is the three o'clock start rather than a warmup for it.
After the parade the stage takes over. Los Hermanos de Los Andes play, DJ Ch'ama Flow works the later hours, and five folklore groups rotate through: Latin Dance Heritage, Mi Viejo San Simón, Somos Bolivia, Bolivian Jatha and Andes Pacha. There is a Miss Bolivia Utah pageant, a kids zone with crafts, and contests off the main stage between sets.
Admission is free, it is on the list of free summer events University Place runs at the Orchard, and all the parking is free too, garages included. The night ends with dancing and glow sticks, which tells you the last hour is the one people stay for.
Our take
Get there by three. The symphony had this same grass Saturday night and this is the louder version of it: parade first, live band in the middle, DJ and glow sticks at the end. Bring chairs or a blanket, because the Orchard is grass and nothing else.⚠️ Heads up: University Place lists this as weather dependent and there is no indoor room to move it into, so a thunderstorm Saturday afternoon is the one thing that ends it.
free familiesfreeOrem
📰 Around the Valley
Tyson is shutting a 723-job meat plant by October 12
Tyson Foods said Thursday it will shut its case-ready meat plant in Eagle Mountain by October 12, cutting 723 jobs. The plant opened in 2021 after Tyson said it would put roughly $300 million into the building and projected about $44 million a year in local payroll. The company is closing an Illinois beef plant at the same time and points to the national cattle herd, which has fallen to its lowest level in decades, as the reason it is running fewer facilities. For Eagle Mountain this lands in a city that has been adding rooftops far faster than it has been adding places to work.
UTA turned on on-demand vans across nine north-county cities Sunday
UTA's fall service change went live Sunday, and the biggest piece of it here is an expanded UTA On Demand zone covering Alpine, American Fork, Cedar Hills, Eagle Mountain, Highland, Lehi, Lindon, Pleasant Grove and Saratoga Springs. You request a ride in the app and a van picks you up anywhere inside the zone, which now covers 77.3 square miles. A ride is $2.50, or $1 on a reduced fare, and it includes a transfer to bus, TRAX or FrontRunner within two hours. Service runs 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. UTA runs it with Via, and during busy hours the vehicle that shows up is sometimes a Lyft, with no separate app or payment involved.
📅 This Week
Theater
Skip unless 🎭 Pride and Prejudice opens tonight in Pleasant Grove and runs until November
The Ruth and Nathan Hale Theater opens Pride and Prejudice tonight at 7:30 and keeps it on the boards through November 7. That is nearly three months, which is a long run even for a theater that likes long runs. The Scarlet Pimpernel is still going there through the 22nd, so for one more week the building is running two shows.
Our take
There is no reason to fight opening week on this one. It runs until November 7, which means the version of this where you go in October with better seats and no scramble is sitting right there. Book it now for later and stop thinking about it.⚠️ Heads up: Two shows are sharing the lobby and the lot until the Pimpernel closes on the 22nd, so the parking that usually works there does not this week.
$$ theaterdate nightPleasant Grove
Music
Worth it 🎸 The rooftop show is Friday, and there is only one left after it
Provo's Rooftop Concert Series plays Nu Skin Plaza at 100 West Center Street on Friday, music at seven, free to walk up to. The 2026 season is five nights total: May 15, June 26, July 24, this Friday, and September 18. So Friday is the fourth of five. As of the weekend the organizers had not posted who is playing, which is how this series has always run, with the lineup going up on rooftopconcertseries.com and their Instagram close to the date.
Our take
Five shows is the whole season, and after Friday there is exactly one more on September 18. People treat this like it happens every month downtown. It does not, and skipping one costs you a fifth of the year.⚠️ Heads up: Nobody knows the lineup yet and that is normal here, so decide on the night out rather than on the band.
free musicfreeProvo
Community
Worth it 🌽 Mapleton puts the market and the band in the same park tonight
Mapleton City Park has both halves of its Monday running tonight: the Mapleton Market from six to 8:30, and the Summer Concerts in the Park series with Riding Shot Gun at seven. Same grass, same evening, one hour of overlap. It is a small-town version of this, meaning a couple dozen tables rather than a hundred, and the band plays to whoever brought a chair.
Our take
The market opens at six and the band starts at seven in the same park, which is the entire reason to go on a Monday. You are not choosing between eating and sitting down. Most cities run these on different nights and then wonder why nobody stays.⚠️ Heads up: Mapleton's park has no real shade on the concert side and the sun does not clear the west benches until close to eight.
free familiesfreesouth county
Family
Worth it 🎬 Top Gun goes up on the grass at Silverlake on Friday night
Eagle Mountain runs its Movie in the Park at the Silverlake Amphitheater on Friday, with Top Gun starting at nine. Nine is not an arbitrary hour, it is when the sky out there is finally dark enough for a screen to work, which is also why these start earlier as the season closes. The amphitheater is a grass slope, no seats.
Our take
Nine o'clock on a Friday is the whole calculation here. A four-year-old is not making it to the end of this movie and everybody knows it, so the families who do this well come with pajamas already on the kids and leave when they leave.⚠️ Heads up: The slope is grass and it is a long walk from wherever you end up parking, so a wagon beats a stroller for hauling chairs.
free familiesfreewest county
Community
Worth it 🌱 Spanish Fork runs a seed swap Saturday morning for the stuff your garden overdid
The Spanish Fork Library holds its Harvest and Seed Swap Saturday at ten. The same swap ran last Saturday and comes back this one, which is the point of doing it in August rather than in March: you bring what came in heavy, take home what did not, and pocket seed for next spring. Nobody is selling anything.
Our take
Bring the thing your garden did too much of. Every August garden in this county has one crop that got away from it, and a swap is the only version of a farmers market where showing up with nine pounds of zucchini makes you popular instead of desperate.⚠️ Heads up: This is a library room, not a market, so there is no cash option if you turn up empty handed.
free freegardeningsouth county
🏟️ The Scoreboard
We asked Friday whether Bay FC would finally get one. They did not
Utah beat Bay FC 3-2 at America First Field on Friday night, with Miyabi Moriya scoring in the 7th, Narumi Miura in the 22nd and Mina Tanaka on a penalty in the 79th. Bay still has never beaten the Royals. Next up is a hard one on the road.
A point in Minnesota, and the only home game for a while is Wednesday
RSL drew 1-1 at Minnesota United on Saturday night to get back into league play after the Leagues Cup group stage. Wednesday is the one to circle: FC Dallas comes to America First Field at 7:30, and then RSL leaves for Orlando on Saturday and León on the 25th.
Four of six out of El Paso, and Reno is in Daybreak all week
The Bees took four of six at El Paso, including an 8-7 Saturday they stole with a four-run ninth and a 13-7 Sunday to close it. They come home tomorrow for six straight against the Reno Aces, the only time Reno plays a full set in Daybreak this year.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it The Center of the Universe, Payson
A corner room at 7 South Main Street on Payson's rebuilt Main Street, part coffee bar, part tea counter, part second-hand clothing shop, with a small stage in it. The tea list is the reason to drive down: they pour loose-leaf Pu-erh and Lapsang souchong, which is not something the drive-through on State Street is going to do for you.
Order a pot of the Lapsang souchong, the smoky one, and whatever came out of the case that morning. Then look at the week before you go, because the calendar is the real menu here: family game night Tuesday at six, craft night Wednesday from six to eight, a strum circle Thursday at six, a local musician on the stage Friday at seven, and an open mic Sunday from ten to three.
Our take
Payson has one room where something is happening almost every night of the week, and this is it. A cafe that hands its stage to whoever signs up on a Sunday morning is doing something a chain cannot copy, and the whole thing sits in a town most of this county drives past on the way to Nephi.⚠️ Heads up: Closed all day Monday, which is today, so this one is a plan for tomorrow and not for this afternoon.
$ coffeemusicsouth county
💡 Hidden Gem
Worth it There is an art museum in a mansion on 1800 South in Orem and it has never charged anybody
The UVU Museum of Art sits at Lakemount, a mansion at 260 West 1800 South in Orem, a few blocks off State Street in a residential stretch nobody drives through on purpose. Admission is free. The rooms are small and the art is hung the way art gets hung in a house, so you are looking at photographs and paintings and sculpture at close range in what used to be somebody's front room. Hours are Tuesday 1 to 8, Wednesday through Saturday 10 to 5, closed Sunday and Monday. Wednesday it runs an Open Studio from 11 to 4:30.
Our take
Tuesday is the night. Most people in this valley can name the museum on BYU campus and the one in Springville and then run out of names, and there is a third one four minutes off State Street in a house with nobody in it. Forty minutes and no ticket.⚠️ Heads up: It is closed Sunday and Monday, which knocks out the two days most families have free, and the parking is a residential street.
free artsfreeOrem
🎟️ Also Happening
🌻 Lindon's sunset market
Thursday from five to nine at Lindon City Center Park, the late-summer stretch when the tables are all tomatoes and corn.
🌸 The Utah Flower Market
Wednesday from nine to noon at Grove Station in Pleasant Grove, growers selling stems by the bucket.
💃 Dancing Under the Stars
Thursday through Saturday at eight at the SCERA Shell in Orem, the twenty-first year they have run it.
📰 Valley News
Mudslides shut the road to the Diamond Fork trailheads Friday
Several mudslides came down across Diamond Fork Road on Friday and the Utah County Sheriff's Office closed it at Monk's Hollow, with debris also blocking the stretch between Monk's Hollow and the Three Forks trailhead. At least one National Weather Service site in the mountains east of the county logged more than an inch of rain that day. County crews went to work on it, and the sheriff's office warned that the amount of mud and debris on the road could keep it shut for much of the weekend. Anyone with plans up that canyon should treat the access as the question, not the trail.
Two of the new school districts are sharing one bus yard in American Fork
Timpanogos and Aspen Peaks, two of the three districts coming out of the Alpine split, signed a three-year agreement to run student transportation together before either becomes operational in 2027. Timpanogos will lease space at the existing Aspen Peaks transportation facility in American Fork: 90 parking stalls for a fleet of about 80 buses, plus two and a half bays in the maintenance shop. Five support staff will work for both districts at the site. Between them they are planning for 155 bus routes by 2027. Timpanogos pays for the first two years by handing over its vehicle parts inventory, and the third year with a portable office trailer.
A 300-panel stained glass sphere is going up at Ashton Gardens
The Roots of Humanity Foundation and Thanksgiving Point released plans for the King and Diane Husein Sphere of Light, a multistory stained glass structure planned for Ashton Gardens. Tom Holdman is leading it, and the 300 handcrafted panels are being made at Holdman Studios in Lehi, the same shop that did the glass for the Roots of Knowledge wall at UVU. The design calls for more than 10,000 square feet of illustrative glass, with each panel carrying a piece of human history. Completion is set for 2030.
The Debate
💙 Good Neighbor
Nominate the Valley's quiet MVPs
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Nominate a neighbor →That is the week. The parade steps off at three Saturday, the rooftop show starts at seven Friday, and the Bees are home in Daybreak every night from tomorrow through Sunday.
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 is going to spend Wednesday morning in a school pickup line.
— The Provo FOMO crew
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