February 2025 Events in Utah: Cider Tastings, Moonlit Adventures, and More

From moonlit snowshoe hikes and cider tastings to SkiJoring thrills and a Valentine’s dance, February 2025 in Utah is packed with unforgettable experiences.

Connie Lewis

February 8, 2025

February 11

Valentine Cider Tasting Class. Sweet sips at Scion Cider Bar, 916 S Jefferson St., Salt Lake City. This tasting experience will offer a variety of flavors to try for the cider enthusiast and those new to cider. The instructor will be Matthew Ostrander, owner and Chief Cider Curator at Ibantik Craft Beverages. Tickets are available at the Scion Cider Bar website for those 21 and over.

February 12

Full Moon Snowshoeing in Draper. Presented by Draper City, classes will be held on the full moon evenings on February 12, and March 14. For those 16 and older. An instructor will contact participants with meeting locations and equipment information a day or two in advance of each class. $15 per participant. Sign up at the Draper City website.

February 13

Writing Workshop: Intentional Storytelling. Presented by the Golden Braid Bookstore, 151 S 500 E, Salt Lake City. This is a free community event and no pre-registration is required. All you need is a notebook and something to write with. It will be held from 7 pm to 8:30 pm.

February 14

Valentine’s Moonlight Snowshoe Hike presented by and held at Wasatch Mountain State Park in Midway. The hike will be from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm for $7 per person and $6 to rent snowshoes. Kids 8 and older are welcome if accompanied by an adult. No pets are allowed. Tickets can be purchased in advance here.

February 14

Adult Night Out: 2025 Valentine’s Dance. Presented by the Salt Lake County Library Services and held at the Viridian Event Center, 8030 S 1825 W, West Jordan. Live music, dance instruction, photo ops, and more. This is a free event that requires pre-registration at the Salt Lake County Library website.

February 14

Nature is for Lovers at the Ogden Nature Center, 966 W 12th Street, Ogden. This event is for those 21 and older and will include desserts, hot and cold beverages and fun facts about love in the animal world. Space is limited and the deadline is February 10 at the Ogden Nature Center website. Cost is $45 for member couples and $50 for non-member couples.

February 14

Craft Paint Night. Held at the Leonardo at Library Square it will be a French inspired paint night for Valentine’s. The night will include French music and painting while exploring the art of pointillism as participants create a step-by-step 8X10 painting inspired by Georges Seurat’s “The Eiffel Tower.” Wine, beer, soda, and chocolate-dipped strawberries will be available for purchase at the Salt Bistro. Tickets for the painting are $35 and can be purchased here.

February 14-15

SkiJoring Utah 2025. Presented by SkiJoring Utah at the Wasatch County Event Complex, Heber. SkiJoring is a competition where a horse and rider pull a skier at fast pace through a course that includes gates, jumps, and rings, combining Utah’s ski heritage and cowboy roots. Competitors compete for cash and prizes based on the fastest times. General admission stadium chair seats and general admission bleachers are available for both a 2-day pass, or Friday only tickets: $35/$20. More information on their website.

February 22

Utah STEM Expo 2025. Presented by Beehive Science and Technology Academy at the Mountain American Expo Center, 9575 S State St., Sandy, 11 am to 2 pm. This is a free, public event to showcase student demonstrations of science, technology, engineering, art, and math. K-12 grades from any school are invited to participate at demonstrators’ booths.

Community Relations, Fun Guide, Holidays

Connie Lewis

Connie has been with Utah Stories since 2013, and has enjoyed learning everything involved in producing a monthly magazine. In addition to writing, Connie performs administrative tasks, coordinates writers, photographers and editors, and oversees a million little details. Her least favorite word is ‘deadline.’ A journalism class at the University of Utah sparked Connie’s love of writing. Finding it hard to narrow her interests to just one major, journalism allowed her to explore a wide variety of topics and disciplines. When she is not writing, Connie loves spending time with her family and traveling with her dogs. “It has been a pleasure learning new things about the state I was born in and meeting the people who make Utah great,” she says. Connie plans to continue her love of learning and improving as the magazine moves onward and upward.

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The Stratos Project and Corporate Power: Who Controls Utah’s Future?

If we were all just consumers, Governor Cox, Mike Lee, Speaker Schultz, and Kevin O’Leary would have it easy. If we were just more concerned about money, jobs, and tech, and less concerned about raising our kids in communities (not in front of screens), culture, the environment, and water, those smart dudes would get exactly what they want — Stratos: a city of the future, buzzing with processors and transistors, making all of our AI dreams come true!

The world we could live in would be a dazzling, Mr. Wonderful kind of place. We would beat those pesky Chinese in the AI war; our AI robots could do all of our farming and ostensibly harvest the water we need for the Great Salt Lake out of thin air. But apparently, we just don’t get it. We haven’t yet reached the point predicted by Aldous Huxley’s vision in Brave New World, where we are completely distracted, dopamine-driven consumers who only need sex, drugs, and stuff to remain happy.

Maybe Stratos will be an amazing marvel, and somehow, as Governor Cox claims, “. . . add more water to the Great Salt Lake.” But we aren’t sold. While this Stratos project has received considerable attention, it’s worth taking a step back to attempt to understand how corporate power appears to have usurped civic power.

Civics is the practice of shaping our society through our collective voices and community involvement. Ask the residents in Tremonton, Utah how well that is working out for them. Can we still shape our world through our elected leaders? Does it matter who we vote for at the ballot box if organizations like UDOT, UTA, and MIDA can supersede our local government authority and citizen backlash?

The corporatization of our communities and the interests that impact our political leaders’ decision making processes are seen as far more of a concern than the average Utah resident’s concerns. Special interests and corporate power are shaping Utah’s future more than ever.

It’s worth asking: ‘How can we regain control over shaping Utah’s future in light of the growing power and billions that the technocrats now wield in shaping our world today?’ Amazon’s market cap exceeds the GDP of Canada. The “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks now have a greater market cap than the entire GDP of Europe ($23.6 trillion. EU countries have $19.3 trillion GDP). Will tech companies become their own nation-states and dominate their own chunks of various states? Will we become their subjects?

There are two sides to this coin: We love Utah not just because we have the most outdoor wilderness playgrounds, but also because of Utah’s prosperity and job market. This is because Utah has become a tech hub. Our tech leadership has minted several billionaires and billion-dollar businesses. Utah offers a market and an educated workforce that more businesses and giant corporations want to be a part of. This is a benefit for even non-tech Utahns.

The problem with this success is that as we dole out more money to attract more tech businesses, data centers, fulfillment centers, and big corporate retailers, it becomes more difficult to carve out our “sense of community.” As corporate sovereignty replaces local business sovereignty, we see that our voices and our votes matter less.

Ask who our politicians work for, and nearly every Utahn believes they work far more for their corporate donors than they work for the average Utah citizen. So how do we best regain control over our communities?

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