Twenty Trip--In Which I See for the First Time, a Geyser

Friday, September 7th, 2012

Friday was sunny and clear, and just warm enough. If you sat in the shade it was rather cool, but in the sun was perfect. Just thinking about it makes me miss spring, and summer, and oh yeah. Yellowstone.

We arrived in the parking lot a little before noon and sat in the car to eat. (I believe smoked string cheese and crackers are the typical diet of vacationers.)

Unfortunately, that delay caused us to miss one eruption of the geyser! We were walking towards Old Faithful when we heard the crowd suddenly fall silent and the loud hiss of steam. Running forward, I snapped the picture above.

It

Was

SO

Cool!

After "oooing" and "aaahing" over the last blub of geyser, we walked back to the Old Faithful visitors' center to kill the next hour.

I looked at some of the books and postcards and notebooks (such neat notebooks! I do so love pretty notebooks...) and then just sat and people-watched.

If I ever go to Yellowstone again, I want to have a free hour or so to just sit and people-watch. It's fun to spot out the foreigners, newlyweds, home-schoolers, people you saw at the last place, people from your hotel....

It's also fun to surreptitiously eavesdrop. Foreign languages are interesting, especially when you manage to pick up a word or two. Parents explaining sights to children. People exclaiming over the buffalo stampede they saw. (Yes, we missed a buffalo stampede!! And why were they stampeding? Perhaps because of the wolves chasing them! Oh, I was so disappointed to miss that.)

What fun national parks are! 

But back to the trip.

Ranger Landis Ehler told us and the crowd around about the geological make-up of Old Faithful. That spot he's pointing to is about 22 feet under the surface of Old Faithful, and it's only 4 inches wide. The steam from the boiling water underneath builds up in the large chamber at the bottom of the picture. As the steam collects, pressure builds and builds until it finally bursts up, through the pipe, and into the air as far as 185 feet! He would have told us more, but the geyser started and everyone lost interest in him. ;)

As the fountain died down, Ranger Ehler radioed in to find out the height and duration of that eruption, and also for the approximate time of the next 'show.'

^Proof that all three of us were there.

Old Faithful Inn occupied our time for the next hour or so (more on that in the next post), and we left just in time to see a third eruption. Third time through, it was still incredible.

This is on my List of Places to Return To. We didn't get to wander around and look at the other geysers at all! There must be so much more to see!

~Kiwi