The Strawberry Fest Committee Doesn't Rest All Summer. By October, It's Running Monster Bash Instead.

Ask a longtime Cottage Grove resident who puts on the Strawberry Fest Parade every June and who puts on the Monster Bash Parade every October, and you might guess two different groups. One handles floats covered in fruit and marching bands in summer heat. The other handles skeletons, candy, and kids in costume six weeks after Labor Day. They feel like separate operations built for separate seasons.

They aren't. Cottage Grove Strawberry Fest is the organization behind both parades, and its own site treats Monster Bash as a branch of the same operation, not a spinoff. The volunteers who spend spring lining up floats for the Grande Day Parade are the same ones who, by fall, are coordinating a Halloween procession that runs the same familiar stretch of Point Douglas Road. That's the piece of Cottage Grove's calendar that's easy to miss if you only show up for one event a year: the town isn't running two separate civic machines. It's running one, twice, with a costume change in between.

That matters for how you should think about the next six weeks here, because the pattern repeats in smaller ways all over town. The same church that quietly feeds the neighborhood produce all summer wraps its season the same week the haunted house up the road gears up for its busiest month. The same city park that hosted the summer's biggest gathering hosts the fall's biggest one too. Cottage Grove doesn't invent a new tradition each season. It reuses its infrastructure and its people, and understanding that rhythm tells you more about how this place actually runs than any single event listing would.

This Saturday, the reused infrastructure is Kingston Park

Start with what's closest. The Cottage Grove Food Truck Festival returns to Kingston Park this Saturday, September 19, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. More than 30 food trucks will be parked across the same grounds that host the town's other big seasonal gatherings, alongside a marketplace of local makers and artists, a beer garden, and activities scattered through the park for kids and adults. Admission is free.

If that sounds like it could be any food truck festival in any Twin Cities suburb, the location is the tell. Kingston Park isn't a generic fairground rented for the day. It's the same park where Strawberry Fest draws an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people every June for its carnival, its bands, and its Grande Day Parade. The Food Truck Festival is newer and smaller, but it borrows the same civic muscle memory: a park the city already knows how to fill, run by an organization that already knows how to fill it.

The farmers market is closing out its season

While that festival is a one-day event, another Cottage Grove tradition is quietly winding down for the year. The CGUCC Farmers Market, hosted by Cottage Grove United Church of Christ, runs Thursdays from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m., and this year's season closes October 8. That leaves three more Thursdays: this coming one, then October 1, then the final market the week after.

The market itself is small by design. Six vegetable farmers rotate through the church parking lot alongside vendors selling herbs and fresh-cut flowers, and the CGUCC Garage Grill handles the food side with grilled brats, hot dogs, and root beer floats. It won't show up on any list of major regional attractions, and it isn't trying to. It's the kind of weekly fixture that only matters if you already live close enough to make it part of your Thursday, which is exactly the audience it's built for.

Then the town's oldest tradition turns 40

Here's where the calendar shifts from newer additions to genuine local history. The Haunting Experience, a family-owned haunted attraction on Highway 61, is marking its 40th anniversary season in 2026. The Zywiec family founded it in 1986 as a single hayride, and four decades later it's grown into a complex that includes a walkthrough Haunted House, the Massacre cornfield experience for guests 13 and older, and what's recognized as Minnesota's longest-running Haunted Hayride, a tractor-pulled route through a haunted forest and the fictional Wilhelm Steelworks. This year's attractions run select days from September 25 through October 31.

Forty years means the people bringing their kids through the gate this fall were likely brought through by their own parents decades ago. That kind of continuity is rare for a seasonal attraction, and it's part of why the Zywiec family also built in a gentler version of the experience. On select daytime dates, the Fall Fun Fest opens the same grounds for families who want pumpkin painting, free hayrides without the scares, and a lights-on tour of the Haunted House. Owner Billy Zywiec put it simply: "Fall Fun Fest opens the property to families who want to enjoy the creative atmosphere in a setting suited to all ages." It's the same property, same 40-year operation, just dialed down for anyone who wants the tradition without the fright.

The parade that closes the loop

Somewhere in late October, the Strawberry Fest committee reappears to run Monster Bash, the parade that functions as Cottage Grove's send-off into Halloween. Last year's edition was the 16th annual and landed on Saturday, October 25, running its usual route from the ISD #833 Service Center on East Point Douglas Road to the district's Program Center down the street. Families line the route in costume, floats roll past, and candy gets thrown, all organized by the same volunteers who spent June coordinating strawberries instead of skeletons. This year's exact date hadn't been announced as of this writing, so it's worth checking the city's own events page as October gets closer, but the pattern of a Saturday parade along that same stretch of road has held for over a decade and a half.

Taken together, that's the shape of fall in Cottage Grove: a Saturday food festival at the town's marquee park, a farmers market finishing its run, a 40-year-old haunted attraction hitting a milestone, and a parade closing it all out, run by the same civic engine that opened the season back in June.

Where locals actually spend the evenings in between

None of this happens in isolation from the ordinary parts of a Cottage Grove week. A lot of that weekend rhythm still runs through neighborhood spots like Junction 70 Grill, a reliable stop for a patio dinner, and Muddy Cow, the kind of casual pub that works well after a bike ride on one of the town's trails. Newer additions are filling in around them too. Vangz Kitchen, which opened in the space formerly known as Ho King, built what co-owner David Vang called Minnesota's first build-your-own ramen station. "This to my knowledge is the first one in Minnesota," he said at the restaurant's opening. It's a small detail, but it's the same story playing out at a restaurant scale that's playing out at a parade scale: new additions layering onto a town that already knows how to run things well.

What this means if you already call Cottage Grove home

None of these events require planning a trip. They require knowing the calendar, which is easy to lose track of if you're used to thinking about Cottage Grove as a collection of separate weekends rather than one continuous season. The food trucks this Saturday, the market's last Thursdays, the haunted attraction's 40th year, and a parade sometime before Halloween are all connected by the same parks, the same stretch of Highway 61, and in more than one case, the same volunteers.

If you've lived here long enough to have a favorite booth at Strawberry Fest, you already know the people behind Monster Bash. If you haven't made it to Kingston Park yet this year, Saturday is a low-effort way to start. And if the Haunting Experience has been a fixture you've driven past for years without stopping in, 40 years is as good a reason as any to see what's changed and what hasn't.

Cottage Grove doesn't reinvent its fall every year. It just keeps adding to the same foundation, one committee, one park, and one family-run haunted house at a time. That kind of continuity doesn't show up in a listing of things to do. It shows up when you've lived somewhere long enough to notice who keeps showing up to run it.

If you're curious about what else makes this stretch of the south metro worth watching, from the neighborhoods around it to what's changing on Main Street, Tom Bullington Homes keeps a close eye on Cottage Grove and the communities around it. Reach out anytime. Let's Connect.