So every year we have lived in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem we have made it a tradition to head to the park on the opening weekend. This year we took a couple of new friends and headed to Old Faithful. As always it was amazing but this year we had an amazing geyser day in the Upper Geyser Basin (where we spent our whole day).
We pulled up below the Old Faithful Inn and there were maybe ten vehicles. We headed into the visitors center to get the predicted times for the geysers and headed out.
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| It's always good to know when the predicted times are so you can plan your route through the Upper Geyser Basin. |
So we started out on our journey and headed out to get up to Observation Point thinking that it would be a great place to see Old Faithful from. We got to the bridge and our friend noticed that Beehive was erupting! As normal I ran to get next to it and WOW what a great first geyser of the National Park Service Centennial year! After that we caught an amazing show from Old Faithful.
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| BEEHIVE!!! | | |
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| OLD FAITHFUL! |
After this we headed out towards Morning Glory from Geyser Hill. The boardwalk from Castle to Sawmill Geyser is being redone so you could access the trails from Old Faithful and Grotto Geysers. We did the round and made it to Artemisia and sat there for a while. We decided to head to Biscuit Basin and caught Jewel from the other side of the lollipop loop. We watched some ravens eat a cormorant at Black Diamond Pool and headed back to the trail. I was the first to get back to Artemisia which started erupting upon my arrival. This was my first time as well as all my companions to see this geyser. It erupted for 24 minutes, we stayed the whole time.
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| Artemisia on the first pass. |
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| Ephydrid Flies on a bacteria mat at Biscuit Basin. |
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| BOOM! ARTEMISIA!!! |
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| Great times with great friends! |
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After watching this amazing geyser action we headed back towards the main basin area to Riverside which had not gone. It was in overflow when we got there so we waited, it must have just started so we waited almost an hour in hopes that Grand had not gone yet. It was worth the wait because you can see Grotto from the Riverside viewing area. We finally got a show, it was amazing as always.
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| RIVERSIDE! |
We stayed for the majority of the show and headed out to Grand because we had not seen any steam plumes from that area. We waited for two turbans and on the third we got the wave and Grand gave us an amazing show. It had quite a few bursts then paused for an amazingly large explosion of water from below! One of the local Geyser Gazers was super vocal and excited. That made me excited because these people live for these amazing unique features! It was awesome!
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| This is the large burst! WOW! |
On the way back to Old Faithful geyser we were near the Lion Group when Castle Geyser let off a little steam, well and a ton of water. It's always great to see the big, predictable geysers erupt. They are so unique and we should not take them for granted.
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| Castle Geyser, one of the greats! |
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After this, on the way back to the car we caught another Old Faithful eruption.
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| What? No one else is at Old Faithful, this is very strange... |
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This was the end of our geyser day at Old Faithful but one that will go down in our personal history books as, well an EPIC geyser day.
On the way back home we got another show, thermal in some way but not the same.
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| Electric Peak at sunset! |
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| The park is opening the roads at the normal rate. Happy hunting! |
Thanks for reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed it!
