Issaquah Salmon Days

Overpriced, crowded, rude vendors. Meh.

Issaquah Salmon Days is Top 3 for my favorite festivals here in Washington State, I try to attend every year. :)
There are so many great artisans during this festival. There’s also a lot of food vendors and music on several stages. It’s also fun checking out the spawning salmon during the Fall Salmon Season!

One of our favorite festivals. Great vendors and you’ve got to love watching the salmon try and swim upstream.

It’s crazy how much this festival has grown!
I use to be able to see everything in an hour now it takes half a day!
Coming to salmon days brings back great childhood memories!
It starts with a parade! Who doesn’t love a great parade!
I love all the vendors! And there is such a wide variety of vendors! You have everything from food to arts and crafts! One of my favorite artist is always there which is great bonus for me! There is no way you can’t find something you need/​want! Great place to find gifts!
They have so many ready to eat food options! Normal festival food items as well as unusual ones!
Also this year they have a carnival, which I think is an amazing idea! And wonder why took so long to have one!
Parking is kind of crazy as well as traffic around the event is slow. There are lots of places that offer $ 5-​$ 10 for parking. There are also shuttles to take you from free parking to the festival.
This is a great free festival for the whole family!

It’s OhFishal! We love Salmon Days! I’ve come here for years since I was a little kid and this festival never gets old! Just celebrating a bunch of spawning Salmon with 200k + of our closest friends!
Salmon days is kicked off on Saturday morning by a family fun run 5k. Then the masses gather along Gilman Blvd, Front Street and Rainier Avenue to watch the parade! This is an especially good parade to watch as its one of the last of the big festivals in the area of the season. «Best of» parade floats from events like the Wenatchee Apple Blossom Festival and Daffodil days in Puyallup are featured in between high school bands, dance groups, scout troops, etc. Its a lot of fun!
After the parade there are two groups of people: those that go home, take a nap and come back on Sunday. And those that slowly waddle the rest of the way towards Front Street and Sunset to the actual Salmon Days Festival. Bring a lawn chair or two otherwise your choices for seating are cement curb or wet grass.
The parade starts at 10am Saturday morning. But be patient… It takes a while for the parade to make its way down the almost 2 mile parade route. Plus Issaquah is still a small town… Everything happens in its own time as it needs to.
The festival is made up of arts and crafts booths on Front Street and along Sunset. The food booths are scattered along Sunset but mostly concentrated in the parking lots that line the back side of Front Street towards the park. Veterans Memorial Field turns into «Field of Fun!» With lots of games and activities especially for the kiddies and those young at heart!
Favorite fair foods: Smoked Salmon Bagel, Elephant Ears and Boehm’s ice cream bars!

Overall: Well worth the visit, if only to see the salmon swimming upstream
This event runs on the first weekend of every October. This year was my first, living near downtown Issaquah I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Apparently this festival draws in 150,000 people every year!
The festival is based on… yes you’ve guessed it — SALMON. On West Sunset Way towards Newport Way there’s a bridge which runs above the stream where the salmon swim upstream to get to the hatchery. You can count how many you can see, but these numbers are tiny to what’s in store at the hatchery!
You can wander around the hatchery (²⁴⁄₇ normally), however on these days there are guides who you can question if you wish. It’s truly amazing seeing the salmon up close, they’re so big and some just look damn mean. There are many viewing areas to watch the salmon swim upstream, battle the currents to make that final leap into the calmer waters above the stream. However, the hatchery makes this impossible initially, but you can still watch them try. It’s initially impossible because they put a high gate which makes it highly unlikely that any salmon will get across — they do this to make sure that they get their quota. When the quota is obtained, they open the gate and the rest of the salmon can go through.
There are Chinook, Sockeye and Coho swimming around and make sure you don’t miss the windows where you can watch their frantic race to spawn at eye level. There’s a display of large «fresh» salmon at a stand where you can compare what they look like etc. It was a bumper year this year with approximately 25,000 salmon.
There’s a parade, arts & crafts, foods of the world section, the Kiwanis salmon and beef barbecue (the line for this was exceedingly long and they say the British like to queue), a silly little train plus 4 stages of entertainment and lots more.
The Foods of the World included foods such as — Cajun blackened salmon and burgers, wiener schnitzel, Reuben sandwiches, strawberry shortcakes, chocolate dipped ice cream, espresso, funnel cakes, corn on the cob, smoked salmon, lemonade, egg roll, barbecue pork/​chicken skewer, stir fry noodles, crab cakes, pot stickers, teriyaki chicken, cookies, crepes, Caribbean food, Kenyan food, corn dogs, hamburgers, curly fries, fried cheese, chicken nuggets, frankfurters, ice cream, piroshky, kettle corn, halibut, cod, shrimp, clam, chicken strips, gyros, Greek salad, baklava, spanokopita, hummus, pizza, Philly steak sandwiches, roasted cashew nuts, elephant ears, seafood gumbo, root beer floats, fudge, candy floss/​cotton candy, chocolate & candy skewered fruit, tacos, apple dumplings, bratwurst, polish sausage and German wieners.
We didn’t try any of the foods or buy anything. The trip was simply made worthwhile by seeing the salmon. This is highly recommended and there’s lots of entertainment for the whole family, but PLEASE use the park & ride shuttle services if you’re visiting from out of town and DON’T park on our private roads! This is highly frustrating!

This is a great fall festival, held in October every year to celebrate salmon. Plenty of food and fun, with a parade and music and artist booths and fun runs and lots and lots of salmon stuff. You’d be surprised what salmon can be incorporated into. Keep in mind that the only reasonable way to get here is to park in one of the shuttle locations. I use the Issaquah Park ‘n Ride and pay the $ 1 for a shuttle ride. It’s not too inconvenient and the festival is worth it.