Water Street smells like cinnamon and fryer oil by Friday evening, and folding chairs are already staked out along the curb before the first band finishes its sound check. This is the version of downtown Excelsior most people picture in September: craft booths running from Third Street to Lake Street, kids circling the Happy Apple Kids Corner, the beer garden filling in behind the main stage. What fewer people picture, unless they own lakeshore, is the other conversation happening at the same time, a few blocks over or a few phone calls away: the one about when the dock is coming out.
Apple Days runs September 18 through 20 this year, and the festival has a specific, unhurried character that hasn't changed much since it started in 1935, making it one of the longest-running community festivals in the Twin Cities metro. But 2026 is quietly different in two ways worth knowing if you already live here. First, this year's festival lands in the exact week that dock and lift removal crews start their real push around the lake, which means the same calendar square holds both the town's oldest tradition and its least sentimental seasonal chore. Second, the physical backdrop along Water Street has shifted since last September, in ways the festival schedule won't mention but the walk from the parking ramp will.
One Weekend, Two Calendars
The Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Chamber of Commerce lists Apple Days hours as 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, all free, all centered on Water Street between Third and Lake. That part of the calendar is public and printed on the festival website. The other part runs on phone calls between homeowners and companies like Niccum Docks, in continuous operation on Lake Minnetonka since 1969, or Crepeau Docks, a Maple Plain fixture since 1948 known for its own signature style of cedar and polymer decking. Late September is when both companies, along with Tonka Built and Mound-based Fineline Docks, start filling their fall removal calendars, and the properties that call first tend to get the dates they want before the barges book solid into November.
The reason the timing matters more than it looks is a rule most boat owners have heard and most dock owners haven't. Minnesota's clean, drain, dry standard for preventing invasive species like zebra mussels asks boaters to dry a vessel for five days before moving it to a new lake. Docks, lifts, and rafts carry a longer requirement: 21 days of drying before they can legally move to different water. If a dock is coming out this fall with any plan to relocate it, rather than store it on the same shoreline through winter, the clock effectively starts the week Apple Days ends, not the week the first ice forms.
| Apple Days 2026 | Details |
|---|---|
| Friday, Sept. 18 | 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. |
| Saturday, Sept. 19 | 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. |
| Sunday, Sept. 20 | 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. |
| Location | Water Street, from Third Street to Lake Street |
| Parking | Ramp on One West Drive; East Lot behind Excelsior Brewing; Mount Calvary Lutheran Church (Saturday only); paid street parking |
| Admission | Free |
What's Different On Water Street This Year
Cut through toward the portapotties the Chamber places near Dock Cinema this weekend, and you'll pass a building that hasn't shown a movie since before most of Apple Days' recent history. The Dock Cinema traces back to the Tonka Theater, a 500-seat Streamline Moderne house that opened in 1940, survived a wartime fire and rebuild, was twinned in 1974 as Dock 1 and 2, and became a triplex in 1989. It closed at the start of the pandemic, reopened briefly in 2022, and has sat dark since. Next door, at 10 Water Street, the lot where a neighborhood Pizza Hut once stood is empty too, and both parcels are now at the center of a Mithun-led redevelopment proposal that would bring apartments, retail, and a reimagined theater space to the block, according to Star Tribune reporting this spring.
Across the street, the conversation got more urgent in May 2026, when a fire tore through Haskell's Port of Excelsior, a bar and liquor store that has anchored that stretch of Water Street for generations. The building isn't formally designated historic, but it's the kind of place regulars mean when they say a downtown has character. A Water Street business owner named Bildsoe put the underlying tension plainly to the Star Tribune:
"It's great on the weekends. But businesses are running seven days a week."
That's the quieter argument playing out behind Apple Days this year, about whether a downtown built for a handful of big tourist weekends can also support a living downtown on the other five days.
None of that changes what the festival itself still delivers. The 1925 carousel, rescued from the old Excelsior Amusement Park, still turns a few blocks from the fairgrounds, one of the only vintage carousels in Minnesota still running rides today. Maynard's Restaurant, on Excelsior Boulevard since 1947, still faces the water and still serves the walleye plate regulars have ordered for decades. Excelsior Brewing, family-run just off Water Street since 2012, still backs up against the festival's east parking lot. Those anchors haven't moved. What's changed is what sits between them.
A Weekend Loop That Actually Works
- Friday evening: walk in during the opening hours, grab a plate from the food vendors, and let the live music carry you toward the Modus Advisors Beer Garden without committing to the whole night.
- Saturday morning: catch the Historic Water Street Walking Tour, which traces Excelsior's run as a steamboat landing back to the 1800s, before the crowds thicken.
- Saturday midday: ride the 1925 carousel, then walk the vendor booths toward the apple pie baking and pie-eating contests, which draw some of the area's most devoted home bakers.
- Saturday afternoon: book a seat on one of Paradise Charter Cruises' complimentary community cruises for a view of the festival from the water itself.
- Saturday night: close it out at the street dance, the kind of old-fashioned tradition most towns gave up on years ago.
- Sunday: a slower morning loop, easier with kids, with the festival winding down by 4 p.m.
Layers are worth packing either day. Late September in the Twin Cities runs highs in the mid-60s with overnight lows that can drop into the 40s, and the lake breeze off Water Street tends to arrive right around dusk.
If Your Dock Is Also On The List
For anyone weighing when to call about removal, the practical answer is now, not after the festival wraps. Niccum Docks and Crepeau Docks both run barge operations built specifically for Minnetonka's shoreline, and Tonka Built stacks removed docks in order on-site so spring installation goes back together the way it came apart. Fineline Docks, working out of Mound for more than 25 years, handles both removal and the rip-rap shoreline reinforcement that often gets scheduled in the same visit once a dock is out of the water. None of these are decisions that need to happen this weekend. But if a dock or lift is heading to a different lake rather than into winter storage on the same shoreline, the 21-day drying clock is worth starting before the pie contest is even judged.
Apple Days has run on Water Street since 1935, and the format hasn't needed reinventing since. What's worth paying attention to this year is how much is happening in the margins around it: a barge schedule filling up a few blocks from the beer garden, a redevelopment proposal working through its own process next to a movie theater that hasn't sold a ticket in years, a neighborhood absorbing a fire and still opening its doors for the weekend. None of it changes what a Saturday afternoon on the carousel feels like. It just means the town underneath the festival is doing more than one thing at once, the same way it always has.
If Lake Minnetonka's small-town rhythm, its festivals, its dock schedules, and its slow arguments about what a downtown should become, is part of what draws you here, Turnquist Spilseth Real Estate Group spends its time in these details for exactly that reason. Start Your Lake Home Journey when you're ready to talk about a home on the water.
