Glacier National Park, Montana

It must have been the call of the mountains again. This year, Theresa & I decided to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary by doing a drive-cum-hiking trip in Montana & Wyoming. Starting out in West Glacier, we drove 2000 miles over 3 weeks through some of the most scenic byways in North America.

June is early summer in the northern hemisphere. We wanted to see gushing rivers & full waterfalls from winter snowmelt, spring flowers & wildlife, while avoiding the summer crowds. Conversely, we were expecting unstable weather.

Guess we lucked out ! Have a look at our picture albums (links in the sidebar). The heavens looked kindly upon us as we chased the sunshine & hiked to Avalanche Lake (at left) & Running Eagle Falls (on the right).

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming





Yellowstone. Imagine a super-volcano with the world's largest collection of geysers & thermal features. Bison "jams" holding up traffic. Hundreds of species of flora & fauna inhabiting a vast, wild landscape.

Ancient tribes of Native American Indians had discovered this magical place 11,000 years ago & it became the first national park in the world in 1872. This June, we joined early-season visitors in celebrating the great outdoors in Yellowstone.

We last visited the Park with our boys then aged 10 & 12 years old, in the year 2000. There was a great fire in 1988 and a quarter of a century has since passed. We are happy to confirm for everyone that the lodgepole pine forests have regenerated very well. Such is the wonder of  Nature.

The Grand Tetons, Wyoming

Grand Teton National Park lies just south of Yellowstone. Yet it has a dramatically different geography. Lofty peaks seem to rise vertically up from the valley floor & dominate the landscape. Tectonic plate shifts over a 40-mile long fault line is still dropping the valley & pushing up the peaks.
As a result, there are numerous scenic lookouts like the Snake River Overlook and challenging trails like our hike into the Cascade Canyon.

"Buffalo Bill" Cody, Wyoming

We planned to explore the nearby scenic Chief Joseph & Beartooth Highways, by staying 3 nights in Cody. As things panned out, we also found time to visit the impressive Buffalo Bill Historical Center & the re-constructed Old Trail Town (do visit picture albums in sidebar).

Cody started out as a small frontier town. It was named after William Frederick Cody, who envisioned it as the perfect eastern gateway to Yellowstone. Larger than life, he was credited with romanticising the American Wild West through his famous travelling shows.

Theresa & The Crimson Sunbird

In July last year,  while hiking our usual forest trail in MacRitchie, we encountered a magical bird of Singapore - an adult male of the Crimson Sunbird species, Aethopyga siparaja.  He posed for us for exactly 1 minute in a shrub of tapioca plants, while delicately sipping nectar from the tapioca blossoms.

Resplendent in his scarlet red, black & grey feathers, speckled with white, some even declare that he's the national bird of Singapore. Indeed, it was fortuitous that we spotted him just a month before our National Day.

 

Yesterday, after lengthening our route to a grand total of 15 km over 4 hours, we were rewarded towards the end by another sighting of Mr Sunbird.

For this, full credit must go to my wife, Theresa. Just as every marksman is well-served by an eagle-eyed spotter, on numerous outdoor adventures, her keen eyesight & woman's intuition have pointed my camera in the right direction. On occasions, she has even taken over the camera, freezing her own breathless moments of beauty like this yellow Oriole & pretty Honolulu blooms in & around our garden-in-the-sky.

Anyway, after hiking the same trail almost every Sunday since climbing Mt Kinabalu together in 2010, we're grown to appreciate the simple joys of Nature. Rain or shine, my trusty Panasonic camera is always with me, for just such moments that take our breath away.