A Florida program that recruits nationally opens its whole season in Highland tonight, The Scarlet Pimpernel takes its last bow Saturday in Pleasant Grove, and Nu Skin let go of about 5 percent of its people on Monday
Plus an art museum in Springville that costs nothing and stays open Wednesday nights, tamales with homemade masa on Spanish Fork Main Street, and why bears keep turning up in three of our towns.
Good morning, Happy Valley.
Wednesday we told you Lindon Marina had gone to a danger advisory. It is still there, the lake-wide warning is still up, and that makes this the weekend you look at Utah Lake from the shore instead of getting into it.
Fine, because the rest of the weekend is on dry land and one piece of it is genuinely unusual. A Florida football program that pulls recruits from everywhere is opening its entire twelve-game season in Highland tonight. After that the weekend goes small and good: a play closing after seven weeks, a gym full of volleyball, tamales on Main Street in Spanish Fork.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 7 min read
- 🏈IMG Academy at Lone Peak, 7pm tonight
- 🎭The Scarlet Pimpernel's final show Saturday
- 🎡Imaginaria closes Saturday in Lehi
⭐ The Big One
Pick of the week IMG Academy opens its season in Highland tonight, and Lone Peak is 1-0
IMG Academy flies in from Bradenton, Florida, to play Lone Peak football at seven tonight. Pull up IMG's twelve-game schedule and this is the first line on it. They open the entire year here, then go home and play everything else in Florida, Indiana and Maryland.
Lone Peak is 1-0. Two Fridays ago the Knights drove down to Washington, Utah, and beat Crimson Cliffs 33-21. IMG has not played anybody yet, which is a strange thing to be able to say about a program that finishes ranked near the top of the country most years.
There is real recruiting on the grass. IMG brings receiver Eric McFarland, a four-star committed to Texas A&M. Lone Peak answers with receiver Dillon Sykes, who is pledged to Utah. The last time IMG came to this state was 2024, when they opened in Draper and lost to Corner Canyon, so the trip has not been automatic for them.
Our take
A roster of national recruits is opening its year on a Friday night in Highland, against a Utah team that already has a win. Buy the ticket on your phone in the driveway, because GoFan is the only way in and the signal at the gate is everybody else doing the same thing.⚠️ Heads up: IMG is not a region opponent, so nothing about tonight counts toward a playoff seed. This is a showcase, and it will get treated like one.
$ footballHighlandFriday night
📰 Around the Valley
Nu Skin cut about 5 percent of its workforce Monday
Nu Skin laid off roughly 5 percent of its global workforce on Monday, days after the company put out second-quarter results. Revenue for the quarter came in at $320.1 million, down 17.1 percent from about $386.1 million a year earlier. President and CEO Ryan Napierski described it as realigning the company's resources to position the business for long-term value. The headquarters sits on Center Street in downtown Provo, so a share of the people affected live here, and this is not the first round the company has run in the last few years.
Orem opened two purpose-built schools this week for students with disabilities
Silver Peak School and the Timpanogos Transition and Education Center both opened their doors in Orem this week. Both are special purpose schools, built to serve students with disabilities inside the boundaries of what becomes the Timpanogos School District. Until now a lot of those families drove out of their own city for services, and the whole point of these two buildings is that they no longer have to. It is the most tangible thing yet to come out of a district split that has been abstract paperwork for two years.
📅 This Week
Theater
Book now 🎭 The Scarlet Pimpernel plays its final performance this weekend
The Ruth has been running The Scarlet Pimpernel since July 6, and Saturday is the final performance. Seven weeks is a long run even for a big musical, and the show has been on our calendar twice already without closing. This time it actually does.
Our take
We have put this show in front of you twice and both times there was run left on it. There is not now. If you have been telling yourself you would get to it, Saturday is the last night that sentence works.⚠️ Heads up: The production carries onstage violence, fog and flashing lights, and the theater says outright it may not suit small children.
$$ theaterdate nightPleasant Grove
Sports
Worth it 🏐 UVU women's volleyball plays a tune-up tonight before the Big West counts
Utah Valley hosts Colorado Mesa at six tonight at Lockhart Arena. It is an exhibition, one of two head coach Sam Atoa put on the calendar before the real season starts, and Colorado Mesa comes out of Division II's RMAC. The Utah Valley Invitational follows next week. This is the first year the Wolverines play in the Big West.
Our take
Nobody will remember the result of an exhibition. What you get is a first look at a roster about to play a conference it has never played in, in a gym small enough that you can hear the coach. Take a kid who plays.⚠️ Heads up: Exhibition results do not go on the record, so anybody who tells you Monday that the Wolverines are 1-0 is wrong.
$ volleyballfamiliesOrem
Arts
Worth it 🧶 A studio on Merchant Street puts a tufting gun in the hands of beginners
The Rug Room runs make-your-own rug workshops in downtown American Fork, and Saturday evening is one of them. You pick or draw a design, they trace it onto the frame with a projector, you learn the gun, and you leave with a rug you actually made. It runs $129 all in.
Our take
You leave with the thing, which is the part that separates this from most Saturday-night money. Three hours, one rug, and it goes on your floor Sunday. We would do it instead of dinner and a movie, not on top of it.⚠️ Heads up: Seats are limited by how many frames the studio has, so this is a book-ahead and not a walk-in.
$$$ craftsdate nightAmerican Fork
Music
Skip unless 🎸 The Afters play Arlington Hall tonight, doors at ten
The Afters, the Texas rock band that has been putting out radio singles for two decades, are at Arlington Hall in downtown Provo tonight. The listing has doors at ten, which is very late for a Friday show in this valley.
Our take
Skip it unless a ten o'clock start sounds like a feature. If you are the person who gets a second wind at nine thirty, this is your show, and nothing else in the valley is competing for you at that hour.⚠️ Heads up: Doors at ten means the band is not on until later than that, so plan on getting home after midnight.
$$ musicnight outProvo
Family
Book now 🎡 Imaginaria shuts down after Saturday, and the activity cards are two for one
Ashton Gardens has been running Imaginaria since June 1 and it ends Saturday for the year. Fifty acres of it: a 250-foot obstacle course, a 150-foot slide, a forty-foot Statue of Liberty, play zones and craft stations spread through the gardens, open nine in the morning to nine at night.
The useful part is the offer. Through Saturday you can buy two Ultimate Activity Cards for the price of one, and those cards are what unlock the twenty-five-plus crafts and experiences that cost extra on top of admission.
Our take
Twenty-four dollars a head is the sticking point, which is exactly why we would send you now instead of in July. Two activity cards for the price of one is the version of this that stops feeling like a toll. Members walk in free, so do the math if you go more than twice a year.⚠️ Heads up: Saturday ends it for 2026, and a closing day at a place with a 150-foot slide is not the quiet one.
$$$ familieskidsLehi
🏟️ The Scoreboard
The one home game we pointed at Monday ended 4-3 the wrong way
Monday we told you the Wednesday match was the only home date on the calendar for a while. RSL lost it. FC Dallas won 4-3 in Sandy, Petar Musa scored twice, and a Dallas rookie put the winner away in second-half stoppage time. MLS soccer, eighth in the West.
Reno has dropped six straight, two of them ugly ones in Daybreak
The Bees hung a 12-1 win on the Reno Aces Wednesday night, the second night running they put double figures on them. Triple-A baseball, and it is the first time in the Aces' history they have given up ten or more in back-to-back games against Salt Lake. The series runs through Sunday.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it Los 2 Potrillos, Spanish Fork
It is a storefront on Main Street in Spanish Fork, and it has quietly been the answer to the tamale question in south county for years.
Order the tamales. The masa is made in house, and you can tell in the first bite, because it is soft and it tastes of something instead of just holding the filling together. The carne asada nachos are what to get if there are four of you and only one is hungry.
Our take
Homemade masa is the whole difference between a tamale you remember and a tamale you eat. This is a place that still bothers, in a town most of us drive past on the way to Payson.⚠️ Heads up: Closed Sundays, no exceptions, which catches out the crowd coming back down the canyon.
$ MexicantamalesSpanish Fork
👨👩👧 Family & Free
Worth it The art museum in Springville costs nothing, and on Wednesday it stays open until eight
Springville Museum of Art sits on 400 South and it has never put a price on the door. Tuesday through Saturday it runs ten to five, Wednesday it holds on until eight, and there is an odd little Monday evening slot from six to eight when the rest of the county's museums are shut.
Parking is free in the lot directly east of the building, with more free spaces west of it on 100 East. The place is fully accessible, there is an elevator, and they will hand you a wheelchair if you ask for one.
Our take
Free, air conditioned, and a real collection is a hard combination to beat in late August with kids who have already been to the pool nine times. Give it forty minutes, not two hours, and leave while they still like it.⚠️ Heads up: Closed Sundays and holidays, so it is not the Sunday-afternoon backup plan it looks like.
free freekidsSpringville
🎟️ Also Happening
🏈 Timpview hosts Corner Canyon
Tonight at seven in Provo, and it is the other big one on the Friday board.
🎤 Sunday open mic in Payson
Sunday, ten to three at the Center of the Universe Cafe, when almost nothing else is open.
🎲 Bring your own board game night
Tonight at 5:30 at the Spanish Fork library, free, walk in with whatever is in the closet.
📰 Valley News
Bears have turned up in Provo, Springville and Payson this summer
Three of our own towns have had black bears walk into neighborhoods this summer, along with Logan up north. Wildlife officials put it down to food rather than boldness: a mild winter, then a late freeze that wrecked the wild fruit crop, on top of an ongoing drought. There is very little up the canyons for a bear to eat right now, so they come down and find garbage cans instead. The Provo bear was tranquilized and relocated. The Logan one was euthanized. The state's advice is dull and it works, which is to put the trash, the pet food, the grill and the bird feeder where a bear cannot smell them, and if you do meet one, stand still rather than run.
Utah drivers are paying about 30 cents more a gallon than the rest of the country
The statewide average for regular hit $4.36 a gallon Tuesday, against a national average of $4.06, which puts Utah among the most expensive states to fill up in right now. The jump came fast. After a week of prices easing, the average went up nearly four cents in a single day. Crude has climbed back toward $90 a barrel, and Utah sits at the end of a short supply chain, so the pump here moves more than it does in most places. For a household driving the length of the county twice a day, that gap adds up by the end of the month.
Alpine School District is in its final year before it splits three ways
Students at Lehi High walked in this week for the last year their school will exist inside Alpine School District. Starting in 2027-28 it becomes three districts: Alpine, Timpanogos and Aspen Peaks. Alpine has been the largest district in the state for years, stretched across a north county that keeps adding rooftops faster than it adds anything else, and the split is the answer to that. Nothing changes on a student's schedule this year, which is exactly why it is worth noticing now rather than next August.
Geneva Road gets a second lane each way, with the work due to wrap in the fall
The $34.4 million widening of Geneva Road, from University Parkway south to 1800 South, is in the stretch of the job that drivers actually feel. Crews are taking it to two lanes in each direction with a center turn lane, plus bike lanes, a ten-foot shared-use path on the east side and a sidewalk on the west. The pedestrian pieces go in last. Anybody who has sat at that light by the temple knows why this is happening, and the finish date has held at fall of this year.
The Debate
💙 Good Neighbor
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Nominate a neighbor →That is the weekend. Kickoff is seven tonight in Highland, the curtain goes up for the last time Saturday in Pleasant Grove, and Ashton Gardens runs nine to nine right up until Imaginaria closes.
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