Once this image loads, click on the panorama and drag the mouse to move the panorama right or left. Also, check out the Scrolling Panorama and the Zoomable Panorama of this 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.