Cowboy Breakfast in new hands this year
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 1 month AGO
A young cowgirl tries her hand at steer roping at a previous Cowboy Breakfast in Moses Lake. This year’s breakfast is Aug. 8.
FILE PHOTO
Volunteers serve up breakfast at a past Cowboy Breakfast. The Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce, which has taken on the breakfast this year, is planning to serve bacon, eggs and biscuits and gravy.
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
Volunteers serve up breakfast at a past Cowboy Breakfast. The Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce, which has taken on the breakfast this year, is planning to serve bacon, eggs and biscuits and gravy.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Quincy National Night Out scales down
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Quincy Police retirements leave big shoes to fill
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Big fun on a small scale
Wheat Land Communities’ Fair opens Thursday
RITZVILLE — The Wheat Land Communities’ Fair isn’t as big or as flashy as some of the county fairs around central Washington, but the folks who keep it going like it just the way it is. “It’s somewhere you can go and get an old-time traditional feeling, and you’re comfortable letting your kids roam the grounds and experience all that it has to offer,” said Board Member Lori Williams. “It’s more of a feeling than (one) specific thing,” The fair starts Thursday in Ritzville and runs through Sunday. Starting Friday, the 56th Ritzville Rodeo will take place alongside the fair at the rodeo grounds. This year the entertainment budget was expanded, Williams said, to be able to offer more fun that’s covered by the cost of admission. For the kids, there’s face painting, balloon art, Lego crafts, races, contests and games. Children can also ride on a little train towed around the fairgrounds behind a tractor.