The Colours and Geysers of Yellowstone

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Every day in Yellowstone is a new experience even if you have been there before. The trip in from the west entrance took us once again along the Gibson River beside the Grand Loop drive. Today there were fly fishermen in the river and lots of elk on the opposite bank. We knew immediately that there was wildlife to be seen because of the number of cars. People are nuts. They stop in the middle of the road, pull off at an angle, jump out leaving car doors open and a whole lot of other crazy antics to get a photograph of the animals. It's like a feeding frenzy. The park rangers have to monitor things and control traffic at times. As soon as someone is spotted along the roadside pointing a camera, then everyone else pulls up and gets out to see what's going on. You could be pointing at nothing and still have 20 people start to do the same. It's really quite funny. It's not as crowded as it sounds. Yellowstone is huge and on only a few occasions did we see this happen.
One of my favourite little routes in Yellowstone is the Firehole lake drive where the Fountain Geyser is found. That's the sunset geyser photo in yesterdays log. It can erupt about every 8 hours, but is unpredictable. Today as we rounded the curve to see it, there were a lot of people who seemed to be sitting and waiting so we decided to join them. We thought that they must know something we didn't,( such as when the geyser would erupt). Our assumption was correct. Evidently when this particular geyser is getting ready to explode, the central basin begins to fill. It was lunch time so we pulled up a log, and ate our lunch while we waited. What a memorable lunch time that was. The geyser erupted in all it's glory and spilled over the rims of the fountain like a little tidal wave. The roar and the rush of the water coming towards us was just super. It is much more interesting than Old Faithful. The only thing that Old Faithful has going for it is it's predictability. The eruption lasted for about an hour but the most spectacular part was that first burst when the water came rushing over the rims. A short distance from the Fountain is the White Dome geyser so we watched that one also. It's smaller and quite regular.
As we were leaving Firehole Lake drive we were lucky enough to see a small roadside geyser putting on a show, complete with rainbow. The sun was hitting it at just the right angle and depending upon the wind direction, the rainbow grew or diminished in size as the water sprayed over us. We had been treated to an unusual site. As I said earlier, each visit to the park is a new experience.
From there we headed to Biscuit Basin and Black Sand basin. These are two more areas of rivers, geysers, steaming bubbling pools and just overall incredible colours which just absolutely amaze me. I took many photos here. Everywhere you looked you could see evidence that the earth was alive beneath us.
We carried on to the Old Faithful area which has a store, auto gas and REAL bathrooms with running water, soap, paper towels and flushing toilets. What a treat !!! The outhouses throughout the park are well maintained but still are not the most pleasant experience.
There is an impressive roadside waterfall at a pull off spot just south of Old Faithful. The name is Keplar Cascades. It was worth a look because the last time I saw and photographed it, it was snowing outside. I just wanted to see how it looked on a warm sunny day. This had been another absolutely gorgeous day with clear blue skies and temps in the mid to high 60's.
By 5pm we decided to return to the hotel. On the way out of the park we came upon one of those traffic jams I mentioned. It was caused by a huge bull elk cooling himself in the river. We saw another bull elk further along. He was standing in the river. The park rangers were doing there best to keep traffic moving but people just wanted their photo of the elk. I took a quick shot as we drove by. I had lots of elk photos from our last visit to the park but couldn't resist taking just one more.
So our visit to Yellowstone was over. We will pass through the park for the last time tomorrow on our way to the Grand Tetons National park. That's our next stop.

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Photos

Firehole Lake
The lake is small but very colourful

The Sapphire Pool
Located in Biscuit Basin

Mustard Pool
Located in Black Sand Basin. The ground was steaming throughout the area.

Comments

[Chris and Nikki]

Wow
Great picture.