YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - Day 3

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Thursday 7th October

Well it was an ok sleep but we were awoken early by a rush of people by our window that were heading for the old Faithful Geyser which is only about 100 meters from our room.
The old Faithful erupts every 90 minutes (give or take 10 minutes) and its a spectacular sight. We had just missed it by minutes last night although we did see it from afar and wondered what it was as we approached the Inn.

We are located right in the middle of the Upper Geyser basin so we decide to doa tour of this area and time it right so we arrive back at old Faithful to see the eruption of water as promised at 1050am.

We will walk to the furthest point away from old Faithful and work away backwards and our furthest point would be the Morning Glory pool which was stunning to say the least. The water is clear and the array of colours are really vivid. You can stand on the fence and look right into the pool and it gives you an idea of the depth.

A few more yards from here is the Riverside geyser and then The Grotto geyser. We kept walking and realised that there are lots of geysers dotted around the paths so we stopped at the larger ones for photo's such as the Castle geyser, Giant geyser, daisy geyser and then stayed a bit longer at the Grand geyser as it was a having a hissy fit to itself!! It was spraying water out at about 40-50ft in the air and we are lucky as it only does this twice a day. A quick look at the watch and we realise we have ten minutes to catch the old faithful doing its thing so we nip on a bit. As we come around the wooden pathed walkway there's a big sign saying the walkway is closed for maintenance!! Oh oh, we have to backtrack about 1/4 mile to get round to the Inn so by this point we are speed walking like the daft fol in the olympics!!!

We arrived at the Old faithful in time and only have a couple of minutes to get the camera's ready and then wait....and we wait...still waiting......whoooooossshhhhhh!!!! there she blows!!! Wow! awesome! it lasted about 2 minutes and the water reached about 20 meters in the air and stayed constant at that height for about 90 seconds. Its quite a sight and we got a decent view from the opposite side from the tourists due to the reason that we had to take a different route to get here.
We walked around the old faithful geyser and entered the old faithful information center. The center was great as it described a lot of things that we didn't know such as how springs are formed, how geysers erupt with water and the reasons behind much of the activity in the Yellowstone area, all very interesting stuff.

We jumped in the car and took off for the Yellowstone lake which was north east around the Grand loop road. When we got there we first stopped off at the Sulphur caldron which is primarily mud pots and fumaroles because the area is situated on a perched water system with little water available. So because no water washes away the acid or leached rock, it remains as sticky clay to form a mud pot and you can see the white and grey liquids bubbling away from the walkway. The smell is just bearable and the views from the road is a safe distance for taking photos as this stuff is P.h 1!!

Next stop was at the Mud volcano. A series of shallow earthquakes struck this area in 1978. Soil temperatures increased to nearly 93°C. The slope between Sizzling Basin and Mud Geyser, once covered with green grass and trees, became a barren landscape of fallen trees known as "the cooking hillside. We walked around this area and its got lots of interesting geysers such as the Black dragon basin and the Dragons mouth geyser as well as a large mud geyser. Its easy to see how this area suddenly changed in appearance as there's a dense forrest here with a clearing where the mud volcano has got so hot and burned a clearing where we walked.

We drove onwards and around the Yellowstone Lake. The lake is 7,732 feet above sea level and covers 136 square miles with 110 miles of shoreline and is the largest lake in the park.
In winter, ice nearly 3 feet thick covers much of the lake, except where shallow water covers hot springs. The lake freezes over by early December and can remain frozen until late May or early June.

We pulled over at the Mud volcano area and it was pretty cool to see mud geysers instead of water ones bubbling high in the middle of springs. The Black dragon spring was pretty cool as it was quite large and it was the highest up spring in this cluster so therefore it was feeding a lot of the lower springs with murky water.
We walked all around this area as the weather was nice and we took our time. The last geyser we stopped at was called the Dragons mouth geyser. This geyser is exactly as it sounds as it has eroded away at the hillside in a way that it looks like a cave mouth and its black and roars very loudly, hence the name dragon's mouth. Its very active and is swirling and boiling away causing echo's within the small cave.

We decided to stop off at the Yellowstone Lake village next and we were glad we did because as we turned into the entrance to the village there was a commotion at the side of the road.....not only were there state troopers and park rangers standing about, there were lots of people with tripods and camera's looking in one direction. We both drove by very slowly and to our left there was a large black bear just walking about having a munch on shrubs now and then. We pulled over and watched along with everyone as the bear went about his thing. He was probably about 100 yards away from where we stood and every so often he would lift his head and have a wee look and then keep on feasting on the undergrowth. The rangers are here to protect people as bears are shy animals but are dangerous if threatened and its a safe feeling to have them around in case there's a grumpy bear about. The park ranger told us this one was 4 years old and is known in the area for being a good bear. We hung about for half an hour and then moved on to the village which was actually a holiday cabin type area and they were all closed down for the winter.

We headed back to the Old Faithful Inn reflecting on our day and we've had a great day to be honest. Springs, old faithful, bears and bison's not forgetting the beautiful Lake.
We had a really fine meal in the Inn although the service was a bit ropey at times. We heard people on the table next to us saying that it was going to snow through the night so here's hoping it doesn't as they get 9 metres of snow every year up in this neck of the woods !
We had a wee walk round the inn observing the wood works and also checking out the three levels above the lobby which was pretty cool. We are moving on in the morning so hopefully we get out the park before the snow gets here!!

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