Things to Do in Provo Today

Most “things to do” lists answer a question nobody in Provo is actually asking. The real question has conditions attached: it is 3:40 on a Tuesday, it is raining, there are two kids under eight in the back seat and nobody wants to spend money. Or it is Sunday, the bus is not running and you have one free afternoon. This planner takes those conditions and builds a plan from the site's own guides: the date ideas, the kid activities, the Sunday list, the trail files and the restaurant hours we have verified. It reads Provo's live weather and air quality, knows when the sun sets today, and knows the rules that make this valley different from everywhere else — that Sunday is its own kind of day, that the UVX and FrontRunner do not run on it, and that a lot of places here keep hours nobody writes down.

How the planner decides

It starts by throwing things out. Every idea has to suit everyone you picked, fit the budget, be in season, and be open to the day: a place this site records as closed on Sunday never appears on a Sunday, the Art Stroll only appears on the first Friday of the month, Velour only Wednesday through Saturday, and the Provo Farmers Market only on a Saturday morning between June and October. If you have no car, only places the UVX or FrontRunner reach, with the stop and the walk our car-free guide measured, can make the list, and on a Sunday that list is empty because neither runs.

Then the weather and the light. Outdoor ideas drop out in rain and in falling snow, and anything strenuous drops out when the air quality index passes 100, the level the EPA calls unhealthy for sensitive groups; above 150 everything outdoors goes. On a hot afternoon it keeps the water and the shade and drops the climbs. Hikes and parks have to finish before sunset, which the page works out for Provo for whichever day you pick; the sunset spots are timed to it; stargazing waits for full dark. The weather comes live from Open-Meteo, the same free forecast the homepage uses, and the air reading from its air-quality service. If the feed cannot be reached, pick the weather yourself.

Then it ranks what is left and fills your hours. A one-hour window gets one stop; a full day gets up to four, with a meal placed where lunch or dinner falls. It allows for the drive from central Provo to each place and home again (round estimates, roughly ten minutes in town to forty for the far end of American Fork Canyon), or about twenty minutes a leg on the bus, and prefers stops near each other. Ties are broken at random, which is why “show me another plan” gives you a different answer. Each stop links to the guide it came from, which is where the detail lives.

What it will not tell you

It will not tell you a place is open unless this site has checked. The library, the Bean Life Science Museum and the Provo Recreation Center have hours stated on their own guides, so the planner uses them. The restaurants come from the hours file behind What's Open Now, and only the rows re-verified in the last 120 days are used; a kitchen that closes between lunch and dinner is treated as closed in the gap. For everything else it says check today's hours, and only places the idea inside an ordinary daytime or evening window, so it never sends you to a museum at eleven at night. It will not invent an event, either: what is on today comes from the events calendar, below the plan.

Where the ideas come from

The planner is the four older pickers and the trail files merged into one. The Date Night Generator supplies the couples' list, the Kid Activity Picker the ages and the bad-weather fallbacks, the Sunday Activity Generator the Sunday answers, the Trail Finder the hikes with their times and fees, and What's Open Now the restaurant hours. Anything tied to one date — a concert, a game, a festival weekend — is left to the calendar rather than offered as if it ran every day.

A page for every kind of day

If you would rather read the list than play with the planner, each of these is written for one of the days the planner handles:

• Things to Do in Provo Tonight, night by night
• Things to Do in Provo When It Rains (or the Air Is Red)
• Things to Do in Provo in the Snow
• Things to Do in Provo on a Monday, and why Monday night is quiet
• Things to Do in Provo on a Sunday, and what closes
• Free and Cheap Things to Do in Provo, in $0, $5 and $20 tiers
• Things to Do in Provo Without a Car, stop by stop
• Things to Do Between Classes at BYU and UVU
• Things to Do in Provo for Seniors and retirees
• Month by month: January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December

Hours and seasons change without notice, and the drive times are estimates from central Provo. If a stop here is wrong, tell us and we will fix the guide it came from.