The Car Show and the Fall Festival Share a Weekend in Pinetop-Lakeside. Here's Where They Split.

Friday afternoon, a line of pre-1973 cars pulls out of the LDS Church parking lot on the Deuce of Clubs in Show Low, right where Highway 60 meets SR 260. By 4 p.m. they're rolling south on 260, through Show Low, through Pinetop-Lakeside, three miles further to Hon-Dah Resort Casino. Local law enforcement is running traffic control the whole way. Two days later, ten o'clock Saturday morning, a different kind of procession starts on the opposite end of town: marching bands, vintage cars of a different sort, and community floats moving through the compact commercial corridor for the Fall Festival Parade.

Both are real, both are this weekend, and they don't actually run into each other. That's the part worth knowing if you live here and just want to get to the grocery store without picking a fight with a parade route.

Two Events, Two Different Corridors

The Run to the Pines Car Show is in its 42nd year, one of the largest gatherings of its kind with 575 registered pre-1973 vehicles filling the grounds at Pinetop Lakes Golf and Country Club on Buck Springs Road. The Fall Festival, running September 25 through 28, centers on the town's main commercial strip and Woodland Lake Park, where the festival grounds sit adjacent to the park's 22-acre lake, paved perimeter trail, and fishing piers.

The overlap in dates is real. The overlap in geography mostly isn't. The car show's home base is the golf club and the Hon-Dah corridor to the south. The festival's home base is downtown and the lake. If you're trying to avoid one crowd, you don't need to avoid the whole town, just the half of it hosting the event you're skipping.

Where the Cars Actually Go

The car show's Friday centerpiece is the Cavalcade of Cars Road Tour, open to any year of special-interest vehicle even though only pre-1973 cars qualify for the judged show itself. It departs the LDS Church lot at 4 p.m. and follows SR 260 straight through the middle of town before ending at Hon-Dah.

Parking at the country club itself is limited enough that organizers are directing showgoers to park at Hon-Dah Resort and ride a free shuttle in instead. Vehicle registration pickup happens Friday morning at 10 a.m., also at the golf club, 4643 Buck Springs Road. That same building is where Barclay's, the restaurant now leasing the dining room and bar at Pinetop Lakes Golf and Country Club, reopened for breakfast, lunch, and dinner service. Anyone planning to grab a meal there Friday morning is walking into registration traffic for 575 cars at the same address.

A few other specifics worth knowing before Saturday:

• No bicycles or golf carts are allowed on the show grounds.
• Pets aren't permitted at the show either, though the Humane Society will have kennels on site if you need one.
• Admission is free, but organizers ask for a non-perishable food item for the local food bank.
• Proceeds from the show benefit White Mountain charities.

The Parade Runs Saturday Morning, Not Through the Golf Club

The Fall Festival Parade steps off at 10 a.m. Saturday, moving through the town's main commercial corridor rather than anywhere near Buck Springs Road. Registration for parade entries closed September 16, so the lineup is set. Around it, the festival grounds run food trucks for all four days, an artisan market with jewelry, ceramics, woodwork, and textiles from regional makers, and children's programming that includes face painting and hayrides.

Woodland Lake Park sits right next to the festival grounds, which makes it the obvious break if the crowd gets to be too much. The park's paved loop, fishing piers, and shaded picnic areas are built for exactly that kind of half-hour reset without requiring anyone to drive anywhere.

Where the Weekend Goes Quiet

If neither event is what you're after this weekend, the Penrod Trail system south of town is the better bet. It's a connected network of ponderosa-shaded hiking and mountain biking routes, forested and moderate enough to work for families with kids as young as six, and it's far enough from both the golf club and downtown that neither event's traffic reaches it.

Late September temperatures here are running between 45°F and 70°F, and the aspen groves in the surrounding Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest are just beginning their gold turn. That timing isn't incidental. It's the same cool, dry stretch that gives the Fall Festival its identity as an autumn event rather than a summer one, and it's exactly the window when a quiet trail walk under turning aspens is worth more than another parking lot.

The Table Everyone's Actually Trying to Get

Beyond Barclay's reopening at the golf club, Lovely Bear Cafe has been picking up attention as one of the newer breakfast spots in Lakeside. Either one is a reasonable bet for a weekend where every other kitchen in town is running at car-show-and-festival capacity. If you're headed to Barclay's on Friday specifically, plan around that 10 a.m. registration crowd at the same building, or just go after lunch once the pickup line has cleared.

None of this requires picking a side between two of the town's biggest weekends. It requires knowing that one runs on Buck Springs Road and Hon-Dah, the other runs on the main corridor and the lake, and the quiet alternative to both is a trailhead a few miles south where the aspens are just starting to turn.

If a weekend like this is part of why Pinetop-Lakeside already feels like home, and you've ever wondered what that's worth on paper, I Am Home Arizona Group can run a free home valuation whenever you're curious, no parade route required.