On our first full day, we toured the Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins. Since we didn't do too much - okay, any - hiking in Grand Teton (other than walking around pullouts looking for animals), we wanted to make up for it in Yellowstone.
In keeping with our plan to be a little more relaxed, we didn't wake up at the crack of dawn and head into the park at 7:00 a.m. We got on the road around 8:30 a.m., grabbed our picnic bags and hit the road.
Yellowstone sits above a hotspot under the earth's surface, and the majority of the park is in a caldera. Various thermal features exist in the park: geysers, springs, fumaroles and paint pots. We found all three in the southwestern area of the park.
Our first stop was at Old Faithful. As we were pulling into the parking lot, we could see it going off in the distance, so we knew we had about an hour before it went off again. We checked out other geothermal features on a boardwalk hat circled Old Faithful, and as we were finishing up the loop, it was about time for Old Faithful to erupt. We watched from the back of the geyser instead of standing with hundreds of other people in the front. This view allowed us to see it go off with the Old Faithful Hotel in the background - added scenery.
In 2009, Jeff and Henry hiked up to an overlook where you can watch Old Faithful from above. Henry wanted to do it again, so he and Jeff set up to the overlook and Ruth and I set off to the hotel. Our first order of business was to get huckleberry ice cream at the snack bar and go out on the deck to enjoy a seat with a view of the geysers. Then we did a little shopping in the gift shop and looked at some gorgeous pictures of Yellowstone by a local artist. By the time we walked outside, we spotted Henry and Jeff coming back, and we all walked back to the car to check out the other geyser areas.
If we could add a smell feature to the blog, right now you would be smelling rotten eggs. Good thing you for you that a smell feature hasn't been created for blogs yet. The springs and fumaroles emit sulfur in the gas and steam, so while you're looking at amazing bubbling, hissing, steaming holes in the earth, you are also smelling a pretty foul smell. It's a small price to pay.
The Middle Geyser area had more features, including the Grand Prismatic Spring. It's huge, and you can't see the whole thing from the boardwalk. But what you can see is incredibly colorful. It's the largest spring in the park, and if we were feeling more athletic, we could have taken a longer hike to see it from a viewpoint on a hill above. We'll have to do that next time.
We drove along the Firehole Lake Drive and saw more geysers and springs. We read that there are hundreds of these features in the park. At the end of the drive we parked at the Lower Geyser section, home of the paint pots. The geysers are magical to watch, but the paint pots are interesting in their own way. The water underneath the earth is hundreds of degrees - so hot that they can melt the rock and turn them into clay. The heat of the water underneath causes the pool of white goo to bubble and pop. Sometimes, blobs of the white goo fly through the air and land back in another part of the pool. Words just can't describe it, and photos can't either. I shot some video because that's the only way to truly see the power of the hotspot underneath.
On our way back to the campground, we saw some elk laying down in the grass in a valley along the road to the West Entrance. We had seen them there back in 2009 and hoped to see them again. It was only females; we haven't seen any males in this park yet.
In my rush to get ready in the morning, I forgot to put on makeup. More importantly, I forgot to put on moisturizer with sunscreen in it. I didn't put any on myself or the kids. Henry and Jeff had baseball caps on, but Ruth and I didn't, and the two of us had sunburned faces. I also had farmer tan on the arms. This was Ruth's first real sunburn, and it made her feel hot and tired. Me too. We put some aloe on and then some moisturizer before we went to bed.
The wind picked up in the evening, too much to cook outside on the grill. We've had sandwiches for lunch every day for more than a week, so I ran into town and picked up some fried chicken. I got enough to cover dinner and have leftovers for a lunch another day.
Since we're driving to Hayden Valley in the morning and it's on the other side of the park, we went to bed early with a plan of getting up early. Early birds get to see animals, you know.
Here are some more pictures:
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