Yellowstone National Park/Grand Teton National Park, 9.26.21 - 10.6.21, Part 3 of 11
By the time we finished lunch and parked at Old Faithful it was getting to be mid-afternoon which again was perfect. I had hoped to see the Grand Prismatic at noon which I did and I wanted to hike the Upper Geyser Basin in the late afternoon light which I was about to do. But first things first. Old Faithful is about as iconic of an American symbol as anything you could possibly think of. It is probably the most recognized wonder of any of our national parks and people come from all over the world to see this geyser. Old Faithful got its name because of the reliable predictability of its eruptions. It erupts about twenty times a day at roughly ninety minute intervals. Predictions are typically within a ten minute range. The official Yellowstone app has a geyser prediction chart for all the predictable geysers in the park which is handy. Old Faithful was just a half hour from erupting when we arrived so we snagged a spot on the front row of the benches and waited. About twenty minutes before the predicted time, Old Faithful woke up, belched out a small cloud of steam, spewed out a little bit of water and after a minute or so it settled back down. We waited and waited until it became clear that we had just seen the eruption. It was very underwhelming. This same thing had happened the first time we had watched the eruption last year and I was beginning to think Old Faithful could use a healthy dose of Viagra.
Obligatory sign shot
Your host and tour guide
Old Faithful with a bad case of E.D.
We had known all along that this would be a long day so we expected to be here by the Old Faithful Inn around dinner time. Its dining room was one of only three dining rooms in the entire park still open for sit down meals. We still had several hours before dinner so we planned to hike a long loop trail through the Upper Geyser Basin before looping back to the Inn.
Old Faithful Inn from Upper Geyser Basin
The Upper Geyser Basin is extremely diverse and had so many weird, cool things to see. The trail started right by Old Faithful by crossing the Firehole River on a bridge before climbing a small hill covered with geysers, cones and springs. The Upper Geyser Basin is the most concentrated area of geysers in the world and there are only four other places on earth with areas of concentrated geysers (Iceland, New Zealand, Chile and Russia). We followed the trail through the basin seeing bizarre looking geysers at every turn. One geyser known as Anemone Geyser was really interesting. It was a dry hole in the ground surrounded by odd shaped micro-organisms. Every seven to nine minutes the hole would fill up with water and then it would erupt with about a five foot high spray before subsiding. Then all the water would drain back down the hole like a toilet bowl. It should have been called American Standard Geyser.
Anemone Geyser
The most beautiful one was Lion Geyser with Heart Spring as a foreground. I’d love to catch Lion Geyser during an eruption.
Heart Spring and Lion Geyser
Lion Geyser
Another odd pool
Through the middle of all of this mayhem, the Firehole River meandered in no particular hurry to get anywhere. The golden autumn grasses surrounding the blue blue water of the Firehole River with white cones spewing steam all around made this a very surreal place to walk.
The Firehole River and Castle Geyser
Sawmill Geyser?
Spasmodic Geyser?
Grand Geyser
Beauty Pool
Chromatic Pool
For the rest of the loop, tune in for Part 4.