Another relaxing lazy day, recharging my batteries. I did a lot of reading (and some snoozing). In the evening, I headed over to the Elizabethan Theatre to see Into the Woods. This is a Sondheim musical based around a mashup of a number of fairy tales, and it featured a 25 piece live orchestra. It started out with a lot of tuning-up and cast on stage in what appeared to be street clothes. Once it got going, cast members quickly evolved into their fairy tale costumes. There wasn’t a lot of stage setting, as the cast moved in, out, and around the orchestra, but the costumes were fun. The acting, as usual, was great, and the singing was really good. The story was fun, and the music moved things along well. Among lots of good singers, the performance by The Witch and Cinderella stood out. Even though I’m not that big a follower of musicals, this was fun.
It was a reasonably warm evening, but even with only a 25% forecast of rain, it started raining lightly about 30 minutes into the production, and kept it up, on and off, all the way through. Luckily I managed to to get drenched, and I didn’t get cold. At least it should wash a lot of smoke out of the air from all the forest fires.
After breakfast, I spent most of the day lazily relaxing. I guess I was more exhausted than I thought, but it was a good rest. I did a little reading, and was mostly a slug. This evening I went to my first Shakespeare play of this season up here, Richard III, performed in the outdoor Elizabethan Theatre. It was a very good production, and the lead actor, Dan Donahue, was outstanding. The supporting cast was very good as well, which included some familiar faces from last year, and from my first play this year. A very solid start to my first Shakespeare up in Oregon this summer.
They don’t do any plays at OSF on Monday, so I decided to take a little trip up and see 
The only downside was from a photographic perspective. It was pretty overcast most of the day (which may have been a mixture of smoke and clouds), and the light was never great. But I did take a bunch of pictures. And before I got all the way around, I saw a forest fire off in the distance to the north. There must be a lot of those in Oregon, because the air is hazy and you could even smell the smoke in Ashland last night.
The first play I saw from this visit was, A Wrinkle in Time, based on a very popular children’s book. It took me quite a while to get into it, as they used a device of reading a lot of exposition from the book in the play. The play itself seemed to be very tied into people’s experience reading the book. Since I’ve never read it, that was somewhat hard to get my arms around. It didn’t help that I was tired from the drive up. But as the story progressed to the different worlds, which were handled visually quite interestingly, it got me more engaged. Overall I enjoyed it, but probably not as much as someone who was a big fan of the book. As always with OSF, the acting was very sharp, and the staging was interesting.
Tonight I saw the last play in 
With my last day of vacation, I woke up to beautiful blue skies in Frisco. With no particular plans I spent the morning in Frisco, going down to the edge of Dillon Reservoir after breakfast. The mountains and water around there are beautiful.
I primarily went to Buffalo Bill’s grave because I vaguely remember it from my early childhood days giving a great vantage point over the city. The day I was there, it was pretty hazy and the view towards downtown Denver wasn’t great. I don’t know if it’s always like that these days, or if I’ve just hit the city on bad air days.
My Colorado Shakespeare experiences behind me, I left Boulder to get a little time up in the mountains before my vacation ended. My Colorado luck continued to hold, and I didn’t get a nice clear blue skied day. Nevertheless, as I drove along the road from Boulder to Golden, I was reminded how beautiful the the front range looks along there. I ultimately made my way up to my old skiing grounds to the city of Breckenridge. Even though it was a Monday, the town was quite busy and crowded. I guess that’s Colorado these days. I had a nice lunch, and walked around the downtown a bit.
The third day of my little vacation started off with a trip down to Denver to go to the 
After making my way back up to Boulder, I got up to The Hill just in time for a classic summer afternoon rain to come pouring down on me. I dodged in to have some dinner, and by the time I came out an hour later it was all dry. It stayed quite warm although the clouds never went away throughout the play.