Barring any unforeseen wintry storms, the Going-to-the-Sun Road across the roof of Glacier National Park in Montana has opened for the summer. The road may now be accessed by motorized vehicles all the way through from both the West Glacier and St. Mary entrances. This is the earliest the road has opened since 2005.

In Tennessee, Great Smokey Mountains National Park harbors a one-way road in bucolic Cades Cove. Its 11-mile paved loop is loaded with scenery, historical sites, and wildlife. But we’d heard about the cove’s famed car jams due to around two million annual visitors: lines of vehicles inching slowly along the road and parking lot congestion that prevented stopping at sites. Clearly, the car approach did not appeal to my sister or me!

With a pleasing whoosh, the water from the acequia was released through a sluice gate at Mission San Juan Capistrano in San Antonio and trickled through a hand-dug irrigation ditch towards a demonstration field teeming with corn, peppers and squash.

Cross-border travel between Glacier National Park in Montana and Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, is set to resume in the Goat Haunt area of Glacier later this month.