By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahSwim outdoors at the Roy Aquatic Center
2977 W 5200 S $8 an adult Late May to late August Directions
Start with the pool, because in a city with no lake, no river and no canyon the pool is the summer. The Roy Aquatic Center is the city's outdoor water, out on the west side of the grid at 2977 W 5200 S, and it runs from late May through to late August, with a few extra days at the very end of the season for the last warm weekends.
The move is Monday. Every other day the gates are open from noon to six; on Monday they stay open until eight, and the reason is a forty dollar family pass that applies that night and no other. If you have more than three people to get in the water, Monday night is the cheapest evening in Weber County and it is the one the locals use. Turn up at six rather than at noon and you get the cooler half of the day with the same ticket.
The prices are plain: eight dollars for anyone from eight to sixty five, seven dollars for children from four to seven and for anybody from sixty five, and free under four. A ten punch pass is seventy dollars if you live in Roy. Twenty or more people booked together drop to seven dollars a head, which is worth knowing before a group turns up and queues one at a time. Those are Roy City's own gate prices; confirm the current figure before you count on it.
One honest caution: there is no official list of what is actually in the water. Slides, a wader pool and diving boards get described on travel sites, but treat that as unconfirmed. Arrive expecting a straightforward municipal outdoor pool and let anything extra be a bonus.
The whole facility, for a party
The city rents the place out in the evening. An evening facility rental is fifteen hundred dollars with a five hundred dollar early booking fee, it runs Tuesday to Saturday from half past six to half past eight between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and the published capacity is a thousand people. The booking calendar opens at eight in the morning on the first working day of January for residents and the second working day for everybody else, through the city's recreation booking site. That is a January decision, not a June one.
There is a smaller version too. The West Bowery goes for a hundred and twenty five dollars, and when a group books a bowery the per head admission drops to six dollars rather than the walk up eight. For a birthday or a team party that is the sensible middle option.
The details
Getting there
From city hall at 5051 S 1900 W, go west on 5100 South and pick up 5200 South, then keep going west about a mile and a half. The pool sits on the north side near 3000 West, past the point where the grid opens out and the lots get bigger. The ground drops about 170 feet on the way, which you will not notice in a car and will very much notice on a bicycle coming home.
Before you go
- Monday is the late night and the family pass night. Every other day the pool shuts at six.
- Sunday it is closed. There is no summer exception to that in the city's published season.
- Season dates shift a little from year to year, so confirm this summer's opening with Roy City before the first trip.
- Book a group of twenty or more as a group. It is seven dollars a head instead of eight and one transaction instead of twenty.
- There is no posted parking or rules note for the pool, so call Roy City if outside food, life jackets or supervision matter to your day.
Take the first Saturday of August at Roy Days
Parade on 1900 West Free to watch The last two weeks of July
Roy Days is the city's own festival and it is bigger than the one-page schedule suggests. It runs about two weeks and finishes on the first Saturday of August; in 2026 that was the seventeenth of July through the first, across eight venues. The last Saturday is the one to plan around, because that is when the whole thing lands in one place.
Here is that Saturday in order. A community breakfast at half past six at the Hope Center. A five kilometer run and a two mile walk at seven, from the fire station. The parade at nine, on 1900 West. Then from eleven until seven, vendor booths, a fun zone and entertainment at George E. Wahlen Park, with a car show running to three. And at ten at night, fireworks.
The fireworks carry one rule that will save you a wasted drive: they go up from Eagle Lake Golf Course. Watch from the park, from a street on that side of town, or from your own block. The show is a city show, launched from a private course, and the course is not the venue.
There is more to Roy Days than the parade. A salmon bake, an art show with adult, youth and junior entries, a bookmark contest and a poetry contest for junior high and high school are all real, priced, city run parts of the festival, even though the one-page schedule leaves them off. If you are new here and want a way in, an entry form beats a folding chair.
Check the date before you book
Roy Days lands on the first Saturday of August after a two week run, but treat that as the usual pattern rather than a promise, since next year's dates are not fixed far ahead. If you are booking travel around it, Roy City's own Roy Days page is the place to settle the year, and the old organizer site now redirects there.
The details
Getting there
The parade runs on 1900 West, the north to south spine through the middle of Roy and the road city hall sits on. There is no published route beyond the street itself, so pick a spot early on 1900 West and stay put. George E. Wahlen Park, where the rest of the day happens, is at 4200 S 2175 W, about ten minutes on foot from the middle of the parade route.
Before you go
- Get to 1900 West well before nine. It is the only road the parade uses and closures are not posted far ahead.
- The fireworks are launched from Eagle Lake Golf Course. Watch from the park or from a street.
- The vendor and fun zone hours are eleven to seven; the car show finishes at three. Come early if the cars are the point.
- A parade entry costs about ten dollars to apply for and a food vendor booth far more; Roy City Parks and Recreation takes both.
- The art show, the bookmark contest and the poetry contest are real, priced and city run, even though they are not on the one-page schedule.
Walk the aircraft at the Hill Aerospace Museum
Off freeway exit 338 Free Tuesday to Saturday Directions
Be clear about one thing and then enjoy it: the museum is not in Roy. It sits on federal ground inside Riverdale, just outside the base's North Gate, even though the mailing address reads Roy. That is a base postal address rather than a city line, and it changes nothing about the visit.
What is genuinely Roy's is the way in, and it is the reason this sits third. The museum is reached from freeway exit 338, which is Roy's own interchange at 5600 South, and from most Roy addresses it is about seven minutes. You do not go through a gate and you do not need sponsorship: the museum sits off base by the North, or Roy, Gate and base access is not required.
It is free, the parking is free, and it opens Tuesday to Saturday from nine until four. For a household with a rainy Saturday and children of any age, there is nothing else within ten minutes of Roy that comes close on value.
The collection, the galleries, the events and the annual open aircraft day belong to the Hill Air Force Base guide in Davis County, which carries the installation and everything on it. This entry carries the drive.
Check the approach before you drive
Roadwork around the base reshapes the approach from time to time, so check the museum's own visitor page for the current route before you set off. The way in has stayed off base and open throughout, but the exact turns can shift while gate projects come and go.
The details
Getting there
From anywhere in Roy, get onto 5600 South and take it east to freeway exit 338, then follow the signs to the museum lot outside the gate. Large vehicles use the west side of the lot. There is no guard post on the route and no base access involved at any point. Nine in the morning is the quiet hour; the last gallery starts closing at a quarter to four.
Before you go
- It is closed Sunday and Monday and on major holidays. That catches out more visitors than anything else here.
- Free means free, including the car park, and the operator asks that the lot is not used for park and ride or overnight parking.
- Give it longer than you think. Two hours is the floor and three is more honest for a first visit.
- One gallery closes fifteen minutes ahead of the rest, so a four o'clock arrival is not really an arrival.
- Say Riverdale if anybody asks where it is, and take exit 338 to get there. Both are correct at the same time.
Take a weekday morning at the Roy Recreation Complex
2150 W 4700 S $5 an adult Open all year Directions
This is the building that carries Roy through the other nine months. The Recreation Complex sits on a thirty eight acre municipal block at 2150 W 4700 S, shared with the high school, and five dollars gets an adult through the door for the day. Inside there is a pool, a weight room with cardio and machines, a gym with eight hoops, pickleball courts, two racquetball courts, an aerobics room and an indoor track where nineteen laps make a mile.
The trick is knowing what the building is doing at what hour, because the schedule is unusually strict and nobody tells you at the door. Pickleball owns the courts every weekday morning from five until noon, with open basketball the rest of the day. The pool runs lap and exercise swim from five in the morning to one in the afternoon on weekdays, and, from Labor Day to Memorial Day, open swim only from five to half past eight in the evening. In summer weekday open swim starts at 2 p.m. (noon on Friday). The middle of a weekday afternoon is not open swim, whatever it looks like from the car park.
So the move for a visitor is a weekday morning if you want to swim laps, ride a bike or walk the track, and a weekday evening or a Saturday afternoon if you want to get in the water with children. Saturday open swim runs ten to a quarter to eight from Labor Day to Memorial Day and noon to a quarter to six in summer, and it is the only weekend window there is.
Doors open at five in the morning Monday to Friday and close at nine at night; Saturday is eight to eight from Labor Day to Memorial Day and noon to six in summer; Sunday it is shut. The page on the two pools has the full membership table, the swim lesson prices and the court booking rules.
Courts, and the fifteen minute rule
Racquetball and wallyball book in one hour sessions, either the day before or the day of. Basketball half court reservations are a Saturday morning thing, eight until ten, forty five dollars, and only from November through March. And a booked court is held for fifteen minutes and no longer, which is the sort of house rule that costs somebody their slot exactly once.
The details
Getting there
From city hall, go north on 1900 West to 4700 South and then west a couple of blocks. The complex shares its block with Roy High School, so if a school event is running the car park works harder than usual. The address is 2150 W 4700 S; do not confuse it with city hall on 1900 West, which is a different building at the other end of town.
Before you go
- Pickleball holds the courts every weekday from five in the morning to noon. Basketball has the rest of the day.
- Open swim is weekday evenings and Saturday afternoon only. Weekday middays are lap and exercise swim.
- Nineteen laps of the indoor track make a mile, which is the number to have in your head before you start counting.
- Swim lesson registration opens on the second Monday of the month at eight in the morning through the city's booking site.
- A booked court is held fifteen minutes. Turn up late and it goes to whoever is waiting.
Make an afternoon of George E. Wahlen Park
4200 S 2175 W Free Year round Directions
If Roy has a town square, this is it. George E. Wahlen Park at 4200 S 2175 W is where the city puts everything that needs room: the Easter egg hunt on the Saturday before Easter, and on the Roy Days Saturday the vendor booths, the fun zone, the entertainment and the car show all at once. On an ordinary weekday it is simply the biggest and best equipped green space in the city, and it is free.
The park carries the name of George E. Wahlen, a Medal of Honor Navy corpsman who made Roy his home in 1969, and whose name is also on the Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Salt Lake City. The sign is worth reading.
The practical version: this is the park to pick when you want a pavilion and a playground in the same place, and it is central enough that most of Roy can walk or ride to it. The city's parks are open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Roy has eleven park entries in all and this is the one to pick first. The full list also includes a dog park, a rail trail and a pond, each with its own page and address on the city site.
What you will find in the parks
Across the eleven parks you will find splash pads, playgrounds, gaga ball and ball fields, though which park has which is not spelled out anywhere. The sensible approach with any Roy park is to drive past it once before you commit a party to it.
The details
Getting there
From city hall on 1900 West, go north to 4200 South and west two and a half blocks. It sits in the middle of the older half of the grid, so most of eastern Roy can reach it on foot. On the first Saturday of August the whole park becomes the festival ground from eleven in the morning, and on that one day parking is a walk rather than a space.
Before you go
- The pavilion here needs a fifty dollar water key deposit, twice what the two smaller parks charge. Collect the key before the day.
- The Easter egg hunt is here, at ten in the morning on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, for children up to twelve.
- The city lists the park as open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and posts no parking note.
- On the Roy Days Saturday this park is the whole festival from eleven until seven. Come for that or avoid it entirely.
- Splash pads, playgrounds, gaga ball and ball fields are spread across the parks; look before you plan which one.
Book a pavilion, and remember the water key
Four parks $25 for a resident April to September
This is the entry nobody writes and everybody in Roy needs. Four of the city's parks have pavilions you can reserve, five pavilions in all, from April 1 to September 30: Emma Russell at 5700 S 4300 W, George E. Wahlen at 4200 S 2175 W, Municipal at 2252 W 5900 S, and Roy West, which has two, at 2900 W 4650 S.
The price is twenty five dollars if you live in Roy, fifty if you do not, and twenty five for a non profit. That is the cheap part. The part that catches people is the water: the spigot at each pavilion is locked, and you collect a key and leave a deposit against it. Fifty dollars at Emma Russell and George Wahlen, fifteen at Municipal and Roy West.
So the sequence for a summer party in Roy is book the block, collect the key, and put the deposit down, and do all three before the morning of. A group that turns up with two hundred litres of drinks and no key to the tap has a long afternoon.
Which of the four to pick is mostly geography. Wahlen is the biggest and most central. Roy West serves the west side of the grid. Municipal is south. Emma Russell is right out at the Hooper edge and is the one to choose if you want quiet and do not mind the extra ten minutes.
The other seven parks, and what the city lists for each
Each of the other seven parks has its own page on the city site with an address and hours: the dog park at 3260 W 5700 S, Foxglen at 3900 W 4600 S, Frank Tremea at 2700 W 5525 S, McCall at 3275 W 5600 S, Memorial at 5065 S 1900 W, the Roger Phil Burnett Meadow Creek Pond at 4200 W 5075 S, and the rail trail. The rail trail is the pick of them, with a new pedestrian bridge over 5600 South from the interchange rebuild. It runs about 3.2 miles in Roy, with trailheads at 6000 South and at 4800 South by Roy West Park. Roy City Parks and Recreation can point you to any of them on 801-774-1048.
The details
Getting there
All four are on the numbered grid and none is more than about ten minutes from city hall. Emma Russell is the outlier at roughly three and a half miles west; the other three are all inside two miles. Bookings and the water key both run through Roy City Parks and Recreation on 801-774-1048 rather than through the individual parks.
Before you go
- The water key deposit is separate from the pavilion fee and it is fifty dollars at the two larger parks.
- Non residents pay fifty dollars rather than twenty five. Non profits pay the resident rate.
- Ask Roy City Parks and Recreation how long a rental runs before you plan a long party.
- Check a park's page on the city site for its hours and address before you go.
- The dog park is at 3260 W 5700 S, and like the other parks it is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Ride the train out of Roy for a car free day
4155 S Sandridge Drive $2.50 and up Monday to Saturday Directions
The commuter rail platform on Sandridge Drive is the best day out in Roy that does not happen in Roy. It is the only FrontRunner station between Ogden Central and Clearfield, which means it is the nearest platform not just for this city but for Hooper, Clinton, West Point and Syracuse as well, and it is a ten minute drive from most Roy addresses.
Two obvious days come out of it. North to Ogden Central, roughly seven miles up the line, and walk into the top of the historic main street, the museums at the old depot and the shops. South to Salt Lake Central, roughly thirty miles, for a whole day in the city with no parking to think about at either end. Both are the sort of trip that turns a teenager loose safely and turns a rainy Saturday into something.
The economics help. Parking at the station is free, and the fare is distance based, a couple of dollars for one stop and a little more for each stop after, so a family day into Salt Lake and back costs less than parking there would. Check the current fares with UTA before you go.
The catch is the calendar, and it is a hard one. Trains run Monday to Saturday only, with no Sunday service at all, half hourly at weekday peaks and hourly the rest of the time. A Sunday plan built on this station does not exist.
Sandridge, two ways
The street at the station is Sandridge Drive, one word, and the junior high a mile away is Sand Ridge Junior High, two words. Same name, spelled two ways, which trips up a search now and then, so double check which one you are pointed at.
The details
Getting there
From city hall, north on 1900 West to about 4100 South, then west to Sandridge Drive. The station sits on its own block with the park and ride around it. Parking is free, and the number of spaces is not something UTA posts, so arrive early at a weekday peak rather than counting on a stall.
Before you go
- There is no Sunday service on this line at all. Plan a Sunday around the car.
- Half hourly at weekday peaks, hourly otherwise and on Saturday. Check the timetable rather than turning up.
- Parking is free but limited and uncounted, so a weekday morning arrival is worth being early for.
- Ogden Central is about seven miles north and Salt Lake Central about thirty miles south, in a straight line. The line is not straight, so read the schedule for real times.
- Four cities with no station of their own use this one. That is the reason the lot works hard.
Read an afternoon away at the Southwest Branch
2039 W 4000 S Free Open six days Directions
The Weber County Library System runs five branches and exactly one of them is in Roy: the Southwest Branch at 2039 W 4000 S. It is free, it is open six days a week, and it is the answer to the cold half of the year in a city whose other attractions are mostly outdoors or ticketed.
The hours are the useful part and they are the same at all five branches: ten in the morning until nine at night Monday to Thursday, ten until six on Friday and Saturday, and one until five on Sunday from September through May. That Sunday afternoon window is the only thing open on a Sunday on this whole list, since both city pools and the aerospace museum are shut.
It is a county service, not a city one, which matters in two ways. A Roy library card works at every branch in the system, and anything the branch does not have comes across from one of the other four. It also means the Weber County Library System, not the city, is where to check the hours.
Pair it with something. The branch is on 4000 South about five minutes from the rail platform and about the same from the recreation complex, so a swim and a library afternoon fit inside one trip out.
The Sunday season, which is a real thing
The Sunday hours are seasonal: one until five, September through May, and nothing in the summer. If you are counting on a Sunday afternoon indoors in July, this is not it, and there is nothing else on this list open that day either. The system changes that season twice a year, in September and in May, so confirm at the county before a Sunday plan.
The details
Getting there
From city hall, north on 1900 West to 4000 South, then west a block. It sits on the same cross street as the rail platform and a few minutes east of it, so the two combine easily. There is no posted parking note here, so this is one to look at on arrival rather than plan around.
Before you go
- Ten to nine Monday to Thursday. It is the latest anything in Roy stays open apart from the recreation complex.
- Sunday afternoons only run September through May, one until five.
- One card works at all five branches in the county system and holds come across between them.
- Check hours with the Weber County Library System, not the city.
- It is five minutes from the rail platform, so a library stop folds neatly into a train day.