Geysers and Thermal Features in Yellowstone

As I said, Yellowstone is the size of Connecticut. It is huge. However, the main park road does a figure eight inside the park. There are five main entrances that connect to this figure 8. The main road goes by many features so you can see a lot of stuff without traveling too far from your car. Of course, there is a lot of backcountry that only the real explorers get to see. Because most of the main  features are fairly close to the road, and we wanted to see them all, we did a lot of walking, but not much true hiking.

While we were in the park we would see bus after bus taking people on daytrips to the park from places like Jackson Hole. The bus trips hit a couple of the highlights. I know they go to the geyser basin that has Old Faithful and they go to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I couldn't imagine only seeing these highlights. Quite honestly, if I had the chance to see the highlights of Yellowstone and only had one day, I'd turn it down. There is just too much to see and I would be left wanting more.

We stayed a week. I had planned a couple extra days than that. However, I misjudged how long we would spend in each geyser basin. I thought we would spend days exploring them, when in truth, you can walk the trails in an hour or so. Since we saw everything we wanted to see, days ahead of schedule, we left for Grand Teton a day early, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.

We got up really early the day we went to Old Faithful. It was cold out. I didn't realize how cold until we started walking on the boardwalk and it had a glaze of ice that formed overnight from condensation freezing. It worked out well that we got there at 6:30 am. No one was at the geyser basin. We had it to ourselves. As we walked from the parking lot, Old Faithful was going off. It was quite an experience seeing the legendary geyser shoot water in the air before sunrise. We saw it go off three other times during the day.

We learned a  lot about thermal features at Yellowstone. I won't bore you with too many facts about the whys, and hows, of geysers, hot springs and mudpots. The one thing that was stressed time and again at ranger programs were thermophyles. Thermophyles are microscopic organisms that can live in the high acidic boiling water. They come in different colors. That is why you will see bright colors in the pictures below. Different colors are different species, each living in water temperature that they thrive in.

A pre-sunrise explosion of Old Faithful

This is Grotto Geyser. The hot water is loaded with chemicals. When the water evaporates the minerals build a cone around most of the geysers. However, as you can see, the minerals formed a much more interesting but grotesque formation

This is the cone for Castle Geyser. It goes off sporadically. There is no way to know exactly when it will blow

Old Faithful going off at a more reasonable hour

The bright blue of this pool and its clarity looked so inviting to dive into.
To bad the water temperature is a scolding 150 degrees

Old Faithful again

The following three pictures should demonstrate why I made DJ get up at an ungodly hour to see Old Faithful go off without crowds.

During the afternoon, while Old Faithful was going off, Castle Geyser did also. They are not close together. Probably 3/4 miles apart. I ran over to it hoping to get a picture before the water stopped spouting. Happily the heavy breathing at 8000 feet wasn't wasted.

This is Dragon Mouth Spring. It is on the east side of the park. The vent is always steaming and it is always rumbling and groaning, hence the name. 

Mud Volcano is near Dragon Mouth Spring. The area stinks of sulfur.

Sour Lake is near the above two features. It has a pH of 1.5. Meaning if you don't like your spouse and they accidentally fell in the lake. There wouldn't be any evidence by morning....I'm just saying

Different colored thermophyles

Beautiful, clear, scolding hot