What to Do in the Lakes Region This July
The madcap middle of summer
July in the Lakes Region has a hinge in it, and the hinge is the 4th.
Before it: a region waking up and stretching. After it: everything and everyone, everywhere, all at once. The farmers markets are in full swing, the theatres open their summer seasons in earnest, the historical societies pull out their best programming of the year, and every conservation area and farm museum seems to have decided this is the month to finally host that event they’ve been planning since winter. If June was summer arriving, July and August are the real deal, the height of the season when the energy is turned on full and we all navigate heat waves and traffic and beautiful chaos on land and water.
I’m saving the 4th itself for Tuesday; that’s its own piece, its own list of fireworks and parade times, and it deserves the room especially this year. Today is everything else. And there is, it turns out, a great deal of everything else.
A note before we start: a lot of what’s below repeats weekly or runs all month, so don’t read this as one set of dates to circle once. Read it as the texture of the month. Most of these, you can show up for more than once and repeat visits are usually worth your while.
Markets & Makers
Wolfeboro Area Farmers Market, The Nick Recreation Park, Wolfeboro. Thursdays, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., through October. This market moved a few years back from Clark Park out to The Nick, and it’s worth the slightly longer drive — more room, more vendors, the kind of market that rewards a slow walk-through rather than a quick grab. With live music and food trucks, this feels more like a fair than a shopping excursion.
Concerts on Canal, Canal Street, Laconia. Thursday evenings, 5–9 p.m., running through the summer. This is the rebrand of what used to be called the Canal Street block parties, now in its third year — live music, local vendors, the street closed to cars. Dried Buffalo plays July 3rd; Donaher takes the 17th. I’m super curious how the new social district is playing out in Laconia this summer and these Thursday concerts are a great time to check it out.
Squam Lakes Artisans Red, White & Blue Open House, Center Harbor. Thursday, July 16, 4–5:30 p.m. Twenty local artists and makers under one roof on Main Street — paintings, pottery, woodwork, glasswork, jewelry, the kind of gallery that rewards browsing slowly. The gallery itself runs year-round, but this open house is the kind of evening worth building a visit around.
On The Green Arts & Crafts Festival, Brewster Academy, Wolfeboro. Friday, July 10 through Sunday, July 12, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (4 p.m. Sunday). Over a hundred exhibitors under canopies on the shore of the lake, rain or shine — this one’s been a Wolfeboro fixture for years, and it earns it.
Hebron Fair, Hebron Common. Saturday, July 25, 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Free admission, rain or shine, running since 1952. Craftspeople, artisans, food, a “Hebron Boutique” rummage table, a dunking booth — small-town fair in the most literal sense, on the north end of Newfound Lake, benefiting the Union Congregational Church of Hebron.
Farm & Nature
Squam Lakes Butterfly Count, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Holderness. Wednesday, July 8, 8:45 a.m.–3:45 p.m. The first-ever count of its kind here — a full day in the field surveying for monarchs, swallowtails, and skippers, with results contributing to the statewide butterfly monitoring network. No experience necessary, free, registration required.
Monadnock Falconry, Laconia Public Library, held at Leavitt Park Clubhouse. Thursday, July 9, 2–3 p.m. A Harris’s hawk, up close, with the people who fly her. All ages, free.
Botanical Infusions Workshop, Prescott Farm Environmental Education Center, Laconia. Saturday, July 25, 1–3 p.m. Learn to turn the garden’s peak-summer harvest into herbal syrups and alcohol-free infused drinks. Prescott Farm’s adult programming rarely misses, and this is squarely mid-summer in a glass.
Herb-Infused Honey Workshop, Prescott Farm, Laconia. Saturday, July 18, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Honey straight from their own hives, infused with herbs and spices you help choose. $20 members / $35 non-members.
5th Annual Flax Day & Spinning Bee Gathering & Competition, Gilmanton Historical Society, Tom Howe Conservation Area Farm Museum, Gilmanton. Saturday, July 25, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. (rain date Sunday the 26th). This year’s edition leans into the 250th anniversary of independence — flax processed the way it was done two centuries ago, a spinning bee staged in the spirit of the Daughters of Liberty, prizes for the longest yarn spun in twenty minutes. There’s a real thread, pun totally intended, between this and what the region was actually doing in 1776.
Mount Major, Alton. Open every day, all month. No event, no date, just one of the better payoff-to-effort hikes on the lake — you’re at the summit looking down at Winnipesaukee faster than you’d expect.
Theatre & Music
Into the Breeches, The Barnstormers Theatre, Tamworth. July 25–28 and July 30–August 3. A comedy set during WWII: with the men of a local theatre company off at war, the director’s wife assembles an all-female cast to stage Shakespeare’s Henriad. Funnier than that description makes it sound, and Tamworth is always a destination drive in its own right.
Hello, Dolly!, Interlakes Theatre, Meredith. Thursday, July 16 through Sunday, July 26. Evening shows most nights at 7, matinees on the Thursdays and Sundays bookending the run. Interlakes punches well above its size, every season.
The Front Porch Project, The Loft at Hermit Woods Winery & Eatery, Meredith. Sunday, July 5, 6 p.m. dinner / 7 p.m. show. Americana and folk, close harmonies, an intimate listening-room setting — dinner and wine included in the evening, not an afterthought.
Movies on the Hill: Cars, Pop Whalen Ice & Arts Center and Abenaki Ski Area, Wolfeboro. Friday, July 10, dusk (around 8:30 p.m.). Free outdoor movie kicking off the summer series, food trucks on site. Bring a blanket; I’ll see you there the Friday they play The Princess Bride…as you wish.
Bob Marley, comedian, The Colonial Theatre, Laconia. Saturday, July 11, 8 p.m. Not the musician — the New England comic who’s been selling out this room for years. If you’ve never seen him live, July’s a good month to fix that.
BankNH Pavilion, Gilford. Essentially every few days, all month — Dave Matthews Band (July 14 and 15), Bob Dylan (July 18), Train with Barenaked Ladies (July 20), Weird Al Yankovic (July 22), Mötley Crüe (July 24), Chicago and Styx (July 25), Hank Williams Jr. (July 31), among others. People tailgate before and traffic crawls out after so plan accordingly.
History & Lectures
The Consequences of New Hampshire’s Changing Winters, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Holderness. Thursday, July 23, 6–7 p.m. Part of the Center’s summer lecture series, Rooted in Research. Dr. Caitlin Hicks Pries of Dartmouth on how warming winters here — faster than our summers are warming — are already reshaping the forests this region runs on. Free, registration required.
How to Support Your Loved One in Downsizing, Laconia Public Library. Tuesday, July 14, 10–11 a.m. Shameless plug of a talk I’m giving this summer; if you’re navigating this for a parent or someone you love, it’s worth the hour. I’ll cover how to start the conversation, the emotional weight of it, the difference between supporting someone and taking over, and the practical resources — senior move managers, estate sale companies, what actually happens to the house.
Wright Museum of WWII Lecture Series, Wolfeboro. Tuesdays through the summer, most lectures at 7 p.m. On July 7, the Freese Brothers Big Band performs “Honor, Reflect, Remember: The Tunes of the War Years,” a musical program tied to America’s 250th. Other July dates feature visiting authors and historians — check wrightmuseum.org for the full lineup and to reserve seats.
On the Water & Wheels
Loon Day, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Holderness. Monday, July 13, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m. Every cruise that day is a Loon Cruise, with the Loon Preservation Committee on hand at the Center to talk about behavior, habitat, and what it actually takes to protect them. Tickets in advance.
The Loon Festival, The Loon Center, Moultonborough. Saturday, July 18, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Free admission, a full day built around the bird that’s basically this region’s unofficial mascot.
52nd Annual Lake Winnipesaukee Antique & Classic Boat Show, Wolfeboro Town Docks. Saturday, July 25, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. A correction worth making out loud: this show hasn’t been at Weirs Beach since 2003. It moved to Meredith, then to Wolfeboro in 2016, and this will be its tenth year there. Beautiful old wooden boats, the kind of event that makes you understand why people fall in love with this lake’s history and not just its surface.
14th Annual Lakes Region Rotary Charity Car Show, Weirs Beach. Saturday, July 25, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. The Rotary Club’s biggest fundraiser of the year, classic and custom cars lining the boardwalk, proceeds going toward food, shelter, and other community needs.
Slowing Down
Sunday Ease & Restore Yoga, Yoga from the Heart, Laconia. Sundays, 5:30–7 p.m., including July 19. Restorative postures, light-touch Reiki, the kind of class built for unwinding rather than working out. $25.
Anytime in July
Not everything worth doing this month has a date attached to it. Gunstock Mountain has hiking, a zip line, and a mountain coaster running daily. Funspot — still the world’s largest arcade, last I checked — never closes for the season. The M/S Mount Washington and its sister ships go out every day rain or shine and offer a different way to get to know the big lake. And if you want to be on the water without a boat, the public beaches and the trail networks around Mount Major and the Belknap Range are exactly as good in late July as they are on the postcard.
There's a particular kind of July evening here where the heat finally breaks around seven, and everyone who's been hiding from the afternoon comes back outside at once. Porches fill up. Someone's grilling. The lake goes that flat, pewter color it gets right and the sky above it shocks and awes with purples and reds and oranges. If you're out there this month, on a dock or in a folding chair or wandering the stalls at one of the events above, find me. I'll be the one who can't resist asking how the season's treating you.
See you on the 4th.
🧭 Jenn
Keys to the Lakes
