This 263 KB image will take a couple of minutes to load, then the image will scroll by itself. A wildflower meadow along the trail above Branham Lakes in Montana

Check out the 'Click and Move' view and the Zoomable View. Having never been in the western US in the summer, I was anticipating, but was really unprepared for the beauty of the wildflowers in the mountains, with remnants of the winter's snow still hanging on the summits. In the upper elevations of the forrested slopes, the flowers were everywhere, in many different colors and quantities. We drove up to about 8500 feet in the National Forest, and headed up the trail through the western evergreen forest. In this meadow, we were surrounded by 10,000 foot peaks, with the stream from the melting snow from the glacial cirques flowing down through the meadow to the lakes in the nearby valley.