Most towns this size have one fall festival. Mound has at least four, and this year two of them landed on the same theme without either one planning it that way.
On September 19, Back Channel Brewing in Spring Park throws its annual Backtoberfest, steins and stein-holding contests included. Eight days later, on September 27, the Our Lady of the Lake Incredible Festival closes out its 47th year with a brand-new Sunday addition: an Oktoberfest built around brats, sauerkraut, polka lessons, and a Hammerschlagen contest. Neither event answers to the other. One is a brewery's annual party. The other is a parish carnival that just decided, for the first time in nearly five decades, to add a German beer garden to its lineup. That they landed a week and a day apart is coincidence, not coordination, and it says something true about how Mound actually runs its fall.
Two Oktoberfests, Eight Days Apart
Backtoberfest starts at noon on September 19 and runs through close, with food from Russell's Traveling Kitchen and a two-shift music lineup: the Hank Thunander Band from noon to 3, then Chris Kelly and his band from 4 to 7. The all-ages event includes a best-dressed contest, a stein-holding contest, relay races, and a meat raffle. It's Back Channel's own tradition, run by the brewery for the brewery's regulars.
The Incredible Festival's Oktoberfest is a different animal entirely. It closes out a three-day parish carnival now in its 47th year, and this year's Sunday programming is new: outdoor bingo, a youth axe-throwing contest, polka lessons, live polka music, and Oktoberfest attire encouraged with a $25 prize for best dressed. It's not replacing anything from the festival's usual Friday-Saturday run of carnival rides, live entertainment, bingo, and a silent auction. It's an addition, layered onto an institution that didn't need to reinvent itself but did anyway.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these things on a shared calendar, that's worth knowing now, before the two events blur together in your head. They're not the same party held twice. They're two organizations, a craft brewery and a Catholic parish, independently deciding that this was the year for lederhosen.
The Festival That Just Turned 47
The Incredible Festival is held behind Our Lady of the Lake Church and School at 2385 Commerce Blvd, and the structure hasn't changed much over the years, which is part of why the Oktoberfest addition stands out. Here's what the weekend actually looks like:
- Friday, September 25: 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., carnival rides, food and game booths, live entertainment
- Saturday, September 26: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., the festival's biggest day, with the same rides, food, bingo, and a silent auction running most of the day
- Sunday, September 27: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the new Oktoberfest programming layered on top of the usual Sunday wind-down
Ride wristbands run $30 on Friday, $35 on Saturday, and $30 on Sunday, with food and game tickets priced separately at $2 each. Admission itself is free, which is the same model the festival has used for years. What's changed is the reason to specifically show up on Sunday. In year 46, Sunday was the quiet day, the one you'd skip if you'd already gone Friday or Saturday. In year 47, it's the day with the axe-throwing contest and the polka band.
A Farm With Its Own Calendar Entirely
A short drive from the church parking lot, Gale Woods Farm in Minnetrista runs a fall calendar that has nothing to do with either Oktoberfest. Gale Woods is a working, sustainable farm on Whaletail Lake, operated by Three Rivers Park District, and it sits directly off the Dakota Rail Trail on the stretch between Mound and St. Bonifacius. It's the kind of place where the events are built around the land itself rather than a beer list.
Fall Fest runs October 3 and 4, and it's free. The lineup includes sheepdog herding demonstrations, a fiber vendor fair, llamas, cooking demonstrations from local chefs, hands-on cider pressing, naturalist-led walks through the property, a farm market, and a self-guided tour of the teaching garden. It's the kind of event where a Saturday can genuinely fill an entire afternoon without anyone needing a wristband.
Then, five weeks later, Gale Woods hosts an entirely different kind of gathering: the 13th annual Tonka Brew Fest on November 7, from 3 to 6 p.m. Unlimited samples from 22 Minnesota breweries, slow-smoked barbecue, and live music from The Selmer Effect fill out the afternoon. New this year, guests have a shot at raffle prizes, and everyone leaves with a commemorative tasting glass. Tickets run $50 at full price, with an early-bird rate of $40 through September 21 and $55 at the door.
Two very different crowds, same farm, five weeks apart. Gale Woods isn't running its calendar off the church's schedule or the brewery's. It has its own rhythm entirely, and that rhythm happens to bracket the rest of the fall.
The Last Saturdays on Shoreline Drive
While the big weekend events get the attention, Mound Farmers' Market & More is quietly running out its final Saturdays. The market sets up on Shoreline Drive from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and has been going since late May, typically wrapping in mid-October. Vendors sell locally grown produce, beef, chicken, eggs, maple syrup, and handmade goods, with live music most weekends.
If you've been meaning to make it a regular stop and haven't yet, the clock on this particular habit is short. There's no festival wristband or ticket price here, just an early alarm and a reason to be on Shoreline Drive before the market closes for the season and doesn't reopen until next spring.
Refueling Along the Way
The Dakota Rail Trail cuts straight through the middle of all this, connecting Mound to Spring Park in one direction and to Gale Woods Farm and St. Bonifacius in the other, and the businesses that have grown up along it are worth knowing regardless of which festival you're headed to. Lost Lake Creamery sits near the trail parking in Mound and has become the reward stop for anyone finishing a ride or a walk. Dakota Junction and the Minnetonka Drive-In both sit directly on the trail path, giving cyclists a reason to stop before doubling back.
For a sit-down evening, Lovy Thai Cuisine opened on Wilshire Boulevard and has quickly become one of the names locals bring up first when asked what's new. Al & Alma's Supper Club and Charter Cruises has been a fixture for lakefront dinners and boat cruises for years, and Surfside Bar & Grill remains one of the few spots on the lake where you can tie up a boat, bring a dog, and order dinner in the same stop.
None of these places are running festivals of their own this fall. They're just the reliable backdrop, open on the Saturdays when the farmers market wraps early and open again on the Sundays when the Incredible Festival winds down.
What This Means If You're Planning Your Weekends
The pattern underneath all of this is that Mound doesn't run one central events calendar. It runs at least four, each belonging to a different institution: a brewery, a parish, a regional park district, and, on Saturday mornings through mid-October, a farmers market with its own separate season entirely. Most years, those calendars stay in their own lanes. This year, two of them picked the same theme in the same month, which is as close as a town like this gets to a coincidence worth noticing.
If you're new to the neighborhood, that's the thing worth knowing before September 19 arrives: you're not choosing between two versions of the same event. You're choosing between a brewery's regulars and a parish's biggest weekend of the year, and either one is a fair way to spend a Saturday.
Mound has been home for a lot of families who never planned to leave, and calendars like this one are usually why. If you're ever curious what a home in this stretch of Lake Minnetonka is actually worth, or you're weighing whether now's the right season to make a move, Stafford Family Realtors has been part of this community since 2004 and is always happy to talk through it over coffee, no obligation attached.
