Bountiful, UT Outdoor Activities

Visitors to the Utah Arts Festival stride across concrete promenades and grassy lawns sprawled out between fountains and modern buildings, which have glass walls that reflect the fest’s vibrant paintings and eclectic sculptures. Since its inception more than 35 years ago, the four-day festival has taken over a multiblock radius to accommodate hundreds of visual artists, musicians, performers, and culinary artists, each celebrating modern art and the local community. Throughout indoor and outdoor exhibitions, visitors explore varied works of visual art represented through special exhibitions and hands-on workshops with featured artists. A marketplace also gives artists a place to sell their paintings, wearable art, and sculptures to help disseminate their crafts and raise enough money for van Gogh’s ghost to move out of their basements.

Musicians score the festival throughout its days with worldwide genres on several outdoor stages, and storytellers and other literary artists tickle ears with eclectic tales and recitations of the UN staff directory. Across the grounds, festival staffers recycle the fete’s discarded plastic, aluminum, and cardboard as well as food scraps and vegetable oil, and promote eco-friendly practices with a protected bicycle lot and bike valet.

Every year, the Utah Film Center lights up screens with a full schedule of more than 170 free programs. Independent, classic, and documentary films flicker to life at locations across Salt Lake City, each handpicked for cinematic excellence, social importance, and high frequency of dance battles. Screenings often end with illuminating discussions with filmmakers or other visiting artists.

Members can deepen their cinematic immersion with tickets to advance studio screenings, access to the lending library, and invitations to pre-showing receptions. The celluloid aficionados also host a number of festivals throughout the year, concentrating on children’s films and LGBT issues.

Equal parts footrace, obstacle course, and mud bath, each RunnerCross course pits participants against up to 15 kilometers of creative and slippery barriers. Runnable as an individual race or as a team relay, heats of 300 runners at a time quickly muddy themselves as they scramble over hay bales, scale rain-slicked hills, and traverse bogs atop a teetering rope bridge. ChronoTrack timing chips in the numbered bibs give runners accurate lap times for settling photo finishes or stacking against past 5Ks, such as George Washington's historic run from a mob of angry cherry farmers.