The Hills Are Alive

You know how there are movies you watch over and over again as a kid, and now when you see or hear anything to do with the movie you just get these vivid mental images from growing up that pop in your head? The Sound of Music is that movie for me. I remember watching the VHS so many times it started to get the "overplayed white fuzz" portions. I remember having a "16 Going on 17" dress that I liked to wear while watching the movie. I remember The Platt's. I remember jumping from couch to couch while singing - at the top of my lungs I'm sure. To this day my sisters and I beg our dad for a gazebo in the backyard. A required stop on my European backpacking trip in college was Salzberg, Austria to go on The Sound of Music tour. Who can forget my evening as a nun at the sing-along? You get it - I love The Sound of Music.

So when I saw that The Sound of Music musical was playing at Sundance I knew I had to go. Plus everyone who heard how much I love the Deer Valley Music Festival told me I had to go to the Sundance amphitheater. And those people were not wrong. Sundance already has a special place in my heart, so spending a beautiful summer evening in those gorgeous mountains without a cloud in the sky to block the millions of twinkling stars was perfection. Of course the performance was no Julie Andrews, but lying on a blanket looking up at Mt. Timpanogos and the stars with The Sound of Music in the background . . . that might just be my happy place I go back to every now and then.

The icing on the cake: instead of walking down from the amphitheater to the resort base and then waiting in line for a shuttle bus to take us back up the mountain to our parking lot, we decided to just hike up the mountain to where we parked. Picture a very long, practically single file line of people walking up a mountain after having just watched The Sound of Music. Surely I am not the only person who pictured the closing credits of the movie with the von Trapp's hiking across the Alps while Climb Every Mountain played in the background. Call me crazy :)