Alpine closes the county's last city celebration Saturday night, the Utah Valley Symphony plays free on the grass at University Place, and BYU Education Week fills campus Monday through Friday
Plus a chairlift running late for Robert Redford's ninetieth, pluots coming on at a Payson orchard, and a young bear tranquilized out of an east Provo yard on Wednesday.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
Wednesday we sent you to Riverside for the hundredth Utah Open, and it is still going: rounds run today through Sunday and the gate is still free. What comes after that is the turn. Nebo goes back to school Tuesday, Alpine and Provo City go back Wednesday, and Alpine's rodeo puts the last city celebration of the year to bed Saturday night. This is the weekend before the calendar gets its shape back.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- 🤠The last rodeo night in Alpine, then fireworks at ten
- 🎻The 1812 Overture, free, on the grass in Orem
- 🎓Education Week, and the thirty-dollar way in
⭐ The Big One
Pick of the week Education Week fills the BYU campus Monday, and one class at the door costs thirty dollars
BYU Education Week runs Monday the 17th through Friday the 21st on campus in Provo, five days of classes taught across the buildings from morning into the evening. It is the largest thing the valley does in August and it moves a lot of cars onto University Parkway and Canyon Road for a week.
The pricing is the part most people get wrong. Full week is $115 Monday through Friday, or $105 if you start Tuesday. A block of four mornings, four afternoons or four evenings is $50. Monday alone is $38, a single day Tuesday through Friday is $48, and a single session bought during the week itself is $30. So the version where you drive up, sit in on one class that caught your eye and go home is thirty dollars.
Elder Patrick Kearon gives the keynote Tuesday at 11:10 in the Marriott Center. Millennial Choirs and Orchestras perform AMERICA 250 there Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Registration stays open through 8:30 Friday night, so late is still a thing you can be.
Our take
Nobody needs the whole week. The mistake is treating this like a conference you either attend or miss, when the real shape of it is a catalog of a few hundred hour-long classes and you are allowed to want exactly one. Pick the class, pay the thirty, park early.⚠️ Heads up: Badges were only mailed to people who registered by the ninth, so anyone signing up now picks up at will-call: the WSC Garden Court, or the northeast corner of the Marriott Center from 7:30 to 5.
$$ learningadultsProvo
📰 Around the Valley
The University Avenue bridge rebuild runs into the fall of 2027
UDOT is rebuilding the University Avenue bridge between 600 South and 680 South, next to the Provo FrontRunner station. The west half came down over the winter and the west-side rebuild goes through the end of this fall. Then crews cross to the east half and stay there until the fall of 2027. Two lanes stay open the whole way, which is why the drive feels survivable and endless at the same time. What comes out the other end is wider than what went in: two lanes each direction, a six-foot bike lane each way, eight-foot sidewalks, and a twelve-foot multi-use trail on the west side tying 500 South to 600 South.
School starts Tuesday and Wednesday, and the west side opens a new elementary
Nebo goes back Tuesday the 18th. Alpine and Provo City School District both go back Wednesday the 19th, with Provo kindergarten holding until the 26th. That is the whole valley back in buildings inside of five days, which is worth knowing if your commute crosses a school zone. Out west there is one more building than there was: Juniper Basin Elementary in Eagle Mountain held its ribbon cutting Thursday, named for the tree that hangs on out there.
📅 This Week
Festival
Book now 🤠 Alpine takes the last rodeo night of the year Saturday, and the fireworks go at ten
Alpine Days has been running since the eighth and it ends Saturday. The rodeo at the Lambert Park grounds is the last of three nights: gates at 6:15, mutton bustin' at 6:45, rodeo at 7:30. The fireworks go up around ten and run about twenty minutes. After Saturday there is no city celebration left on the county calendar until next summer.
Our take
Two of the three nights are already gone, which tells you what Saturday looks like. Small-town rodeo is a different thing than the big ones down south: the announcer knows the riders' parents, and the whole town is standing on the same hill. Go for the closing, stay for the twenty minutes at ten.⚠️ Heads up: Gates at 6:15 and mutton bustin' at 6:45 means a 7:30 arrival walks in after the part the kids came for.
$ familiessportsAlpine
Music
Worth it 🎻 The Utah Valley Symphony plays the Orchard and the whole thing is free
The Utah Valley Symphony is back on the lawn at The Orchard at University Place in Orem, Saturday at seven, conducted by Dr. Cheung Chau. The program is built around America 250: the 1812 Overture, Fanfare for the Common Man, and selections from West Side Story. Admission is free and so is all the parking, garages included, which at University Place is not a small thing on a weekend night.
Our take
The 1812 Overture outdoors is a different animal than the 1812 Overture in a hall, because the low end has somewhere to go. Bring chairs and a blanket, because The Orchard is grass and nothing else, and put the kids down front where they can see the timpani.⚠️ Heads up: This one lives or dies on the sky, since University Place calls it off for weather and there is no indoor backup.
free familiesfreeOrem
Outdoors
Worth it 🚡 Sundance runs the chairlift late for Robert Redford's birthday
Sundance is keeping the Outlaw Express spinning from six to eight on Tuesday evening for what the resort is calling Robert Redford Day. The eighteenth was his birthday. He died last September, so this is the first one without him, and the resort has framed it as a ride rather than a ceremony: get on the lift, go up the mountain he bought in 1968, come back down.
Our take
He would have been ninety on Tuesday. Riding a chairlift is a strange way to mark a death and somehow the right one here, because the mountain is the thing he actually built and the rest of it is film festivals. Take the ride, look at the canyon, do not expect a speech.⚠️ Heads up: The resort has not posted a rate for the extended evening window, so the price is a phone call to 801-225-4107 before you drive up.
$$ outdoorsdate nightProvo Canyon
Food
Worth it 🍑 The peaches are on at a Payson orchard, and the pluots just started
Rocky Top Fruit Farm sits at 8648 South 6200 West in Payson, out past the freeway on the west side, and it has been picking peaches since the first of August. Pluots come on mid-month, so this is the week both are in the rows at the same time. The fruit is grown organically and the barn sells jam, honey and pre-ordered sourdough on Wednesdays. Hours are Monday and Wednesday through Friday from nine to one, and Saturday from nine to three.
Our take
You pick these yourself, which is the whole difference. A tree-ripe peach does not survive a truck, so it never shows up in a store, and the way you find out is to stand in the row and eat one over your shoes. Bring your own flats if you have them.⚠️ Heads up: Closed Tuesday and Sunday, and the weekday windows shut at one, so an after-work run does not exist here.
$ familiesfoodsouth county
Comedy
Skip unless 🎤 Frank DeLima brings a Hawaii comedy hour to the Covey
Laugh Hawaiian Style lands at the Covey Center for the Arts in downtown Provo, Saturday at seven. DeLima has worked Honolulu rooms since the seventies and the act is built out of local Hawaii material: the accents, the neighborhoods, the school rivalries.
Our take
This one depends entirely on whether the name means something to you. For plenty of Utah County families with Hawaii in them it means quite a lot, and they will have sorted their seats already. For everybody else it is an hour of jokes about places you have never been, and we would take the grass in Orem instead.⚠️ Heads up: Buy through the Covey box office at 801-852-6000 rather than the resale sites that come up first in a search, because they are not the same price.
$$ comedydate nightProvo
🏟️ The Scoreboard
Bay FC has never once beaten Utah, and they get another go tonight
The Royals host Bay FC at America First Field tonight at eight. Utah sits third in the league on 33 points at 10-4-5, coming off a 2-1 loss at Denver Summit that ended a long unbeaten run. Bay is fourteenth on 19 points and has not won in four.
Three unanswered past Juarez, and Minnesota comes next
RSL beat FC Juarez 3-0 at home Tuesday to close out the Leagues Cup group stage, a week after putting four past Atlante. League play picks back up Saturday night in Minnesota, and RSL is fifth in the Western Conference on 27 points.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it Màstra Italian Bakery Bistro, American Fork
A small room at 476 North 900 West in American Fork, run by Jonathan Cagnacci, who grew up in Italy and rolls the pasta in the building. The menu is short and it is almost all pasta: fettuccine with a ragù that cooks five hours, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, trenette al pesto with potatoes and green beans in it the way Liguria does it.
Order the spaghetti alla carbonara at $20.90. It is guanciale, egg, Pecorino Romano and black pepper, and there is no cream anywhere near it, which is the version most American kitchens will not sell you. Add a slice of the plain focaccia at $4.20; it is their best seller and it is what the sauce is for.
Our take
Jonathan Cagnacci grew up in Italy and the menu reads like somebody who is not trying to please everybody. Twelve pastas, four focaccias, and no chicken parmesan anywhere on it. That is the tell.⚠️ Heads up: Closed Sundays, and on Friday the kitchen shuts between two and four thirty, so the early Friday dinner people plan on does not exist there.
$$ fooddate nightnorth county
👨👩👧 Family & Free
Worth it Eagle Mountain shut one splash pad this summer and kept the good one running
Cory Wride Memorial Park at 6000 North Pony Express Parkway has the zipline, the all-abilities playground, the big turf-covered hill with slides down it, and the climbing nets. The splash pad runs daily from ten in the morning to eight at night, Memorial Day through Labor Day. The Nolen Park splash pad on the other side of town is off for all of 2026 to save water, so this is the one with water in it.
Our take
There are two parks worth the drive out there and only one of them has water this year. The hill is the part that surprises people: a real hill with real slides down it, and it works for a four-year-old and a ten-year-old at the same time, which almost nothing does.⚠️ Heads up: The splash pad shuts off for the season on Labor Day, so there are about three weekends left in it.
free familiesfreewest county
🎟️ Also Happening
🏐 BYU's Blue and White volleyball scrimmage
Saturday at one in the Smith Fieldhouse in Provo, the team's only look at itself before the season starts.
🎨 Chalk the Block at the Riverwoods
Thursday the 20th in Provo, chalk artists working the plaza with the proceeds going to charity.
🎸 The Buskers Brawl in Springville
Friday the 21st from six to 8:30, more than twenty buskers at once on Festival Street.
📰 Valley News
Utah has spent about $33 million fighting fire so far, and the season is not over
The state's firefighting bill is running near $33 million in 2026, and officials expect it to climb by roughly another third before the season closes, since crews often work fires into September. More than 532,000 acres have burned, which makes it the second-biggest fire year Utah has on record. Last year's total came in around $240 million, with the state carrying about $36 million of it. The cost is rising faster than the acreage because of where these fires are burning: closer to towns, in heat and wind that make them harder to hold.
Clyde Companies is putting 31 acres around its new headquarters on the Provo and Springville line
The project sits on 31 acres straddling the boundary between Provo and Springville near U.S. 89 and 1400 North, wrapped around the company's new corporate headquarters. The Provo side of the line carries the housing: 168 townhomes, 90 condominium units and close to 10,000 square feet of retail. The Springville side carries the commercial half, more than 67,000 square feet of retail and another 27,526 square feet of office. Clyde describes it as food and drink, housing and gathering space around the headquarters building. Because the property sits on the border, the two cities still have to sort out how the money from it gets divided.
A young black bear walked through east Provo on Wednesday and left tranquilized
A juvenile black bear turned up Wednesday afternoon in the neighborhood north of Splash Summit, around 1600 North and 1450 East. Several residents saw it and one caught it on a doorbell camera. Animal control, city officers and a drone team worked it until the animal was cornered, and the Division of Wildlife Resources tranquilized it and moved it out. The city says bear sightings here are not unheard of, but a daytime one in a neighborhood is unusual, and it puts the increase down to how dry it has been. Springville has had similar reports.
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. Alpine's gates open at 6:15 and the fireworks go at ten, the symphony wants you on the grass by dark, and if you are driving to Payson for peaches, Rocky Top is shut 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 still has a kid asking what there is to do before Tuesday.
— The Provo FOMO crew
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