Cowboy Breakfast in new hands this year
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 months, 1 week AGO
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | July 28, 2025 2:06 AM
MOSES LAKE — ’Round these here parts, the Cowboy Breakfast is almost as much of a tradition as the rodeo. So when the Kiwanis Club wasn’t able to organize it this year, the Chamber of Commerce saddled up.
“The Rodeo Association came to us and we said ‘Sure. We don’t want to see it go away,’” said Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce Director Debbie Doran-Martinez.
For decades – exactly how long isn’t clear – the Cowboy Breakfast has been Moses Lake’s kickoff to the Grant County Fair and the Moses Lake Roundup Rodeo. The Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce is mostly keeping things the same, but a few changes will be noticeable.
“The first thing we’re doing is, over the years, the price had gone up and up,” Doran-Martinez said. “So we’re bringing the price point of the breakfast down to $10 because we’ve got sponsors to subsidize it.”
Breakfast starts at 7 a.m. Aug. 8, which is the Friday before fair week, at Sinkiuse Square next to the Moses Lake Post Office.
“We’ll do bacon and eggs and biscuits and gravy, and we’ll have fruit juice and coffee,” Doran-Martinez said.
The Chamber put out requests on its website for local businesses to sponsor specific items, as well as one large overall sponsor.
“I don’t know that we got a sponsor in every category that we pout out there, but we have enough sponsors for the anticipated number of breakfasts we think we’re going to serve,” Doran-Martinez said.
Besides breakfast, there will be music spun by DJ Dale Roth, and the Pee-Wee Stampede stick horse rodeo, where children compete in barrel racing, bronc riding and roping a stationary steer. There’s no extra charge for the Pee-Wee Stampede, which is sponsored by Guild Mortgage, Doran-Martinez said.
“(We) invite everybody down to … kick off the rodeo, which is a big part of our community,” Doran-Martinez said.
Note: An earlier version of this story gave the Cowboy Breakfast start time incorrectly. The breakfast starts at 7 a.m. The error has been corrected above.
Cowboy Breakfast
Moses Lake
Sinkiuse Square
Third Avenue and Ash Street
Aug. 8
7-10 a.m.
$10 per plate
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
GCAO cat room open again after outbreak
MOSES LAKE — The cat room is reopened at Grant County Animal Outreach, and the shelter could use a little help.
Museum’s Rusty Mammoth sale tomorrow to be the biggest in years
MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Museum & Art Center’s annual Rusty Mammoth Sale is tomorrow, and it’s a doozy, according to Museum Superintendent Dollie Boyd.
Hot stuff
Pride meets taste buds at Greenpoint chili cookoff
MOSES LAKE — Greenpoint Technologies engineer Gary Neu walked away with $100 and some serious bragging rights at the company’s annual chili cookoff April 27. “My reliable meat pimps at Ernie’s (Quality Meats and Wine) came through for me again,” Neu said. His chili wasn’t very spicy, he said, just traditional. “Just a good, solid, basic chili,” he said. “I’ve learned through the competitions that you have to cater to a very neutral element … If it even looks hot (people) will run and hide. There’s bell peppers in there, so it’s got a good color, but it doesn’t really have much heat.” Greenpoint, a company that does custom interiors for private planes, has held chili cookoffs for its employees for years, but this is only the fourth year that the company has invited judges from outside the company. This year’s judges were all from the Port of Moses Lake: Executive Director Dan Roach, Facility Director Milt Miller, Airport Director Rich Mueller, Executive Assistant Bonnie Peterson and Commissioner Darrin Jackson.
