Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic Spring
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A very light dusting of snow in the night. Hardly anything really. So what’s the state of the roads? Everything is open! Ok, then. Let’s go see Old Faithful, which let’s face it, if you go to Yellowstone, you have to go see it. Would you go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower?
We got on the road about 10am. Passing through Gardiner we saw a big cherry picker with my new favorite slogan on the back – “Do you even lift, bro?”. Our favorite booth lady was not there this morning and the one who was, was not as amused by Les’ declaration that we were taking a load of snow (the bed was still full of it) to Old Faithful as she would have been. Tough crowd.
We passed by Mammoth Hot Springs (again) and down the road to Norris Geyser basin and past it, onto roads we have not yet traversed on this trip. We passed up a number of opportunities to stop, sticking to the prime directive of getting to Old Faithful. We figured we could see them on the way back.
We hoped to get to the area by noon and would have, except there was a herd of bison off to the left, well in the distance and not in the road, and yet somehow, this caused a whole row of cars to back up for upwards of 20 minutes before we could get by. So it was closer to 12:30 before we got to the area. There’s lots going on there and all the cars that had backed up arrived at once, so it took some doing to figure out where to go and find a place to park. And *then* further doing to figure out where the heck the geyser basin was!
We wandered off towards the old Yellowstone Inn figuring it would be nearby. And despite the fact the path up to it was shoveled, it was ‘closed for the season’. So back the way we came. We wandered a bit more until we found a helpful park worker who directed us to the right spot.
We passed a photographer with a nice camera and tripod walking out and figured, yup, just missed it, and we were right. So now it’s 1:30 and we had about an hour to kill before Old Faithful would (faithfully) go off again. To make sure, we went into the visitor center where they keep a board. Yup, 2:25 was the best guess for the next one. Plus or minus 10 minutes or so.
Well, while we’re here we can have a look around and let’s check the road conditions too. And…the road back up to the north entrance is closed! Wait, what? Um… that’s where our stuff is. Specifically, our warm trailer where we sleep. We checked with the rangers and they couldn’t tell us anything other than ‘you can’t go that way’ and ‘we don’t know when it will be open again’. A couple of cars had slid off the road and it was ‘too dangerous’. They were out sanding, so maybe…
Ok, so what are our options? Well, the West Entrance is open. You can drive out there, take a highway we know is open up to Bozeman (a 3 hour drive) and then back in the North entrance (another 2 hour drive). Well, that sounds like fun. Not. Or, we could attempt to find a hotel in West Yellowstone. But given the number of people milling about, we weren’t too optimistic, although it seems like there are a lot of them.
But, there was nothing we could do at the moment (except worry of course). The plan was, wait and see Old Faithful erupt (which was, after all, why we had come), head back up north and see if the road is open, since there were still a few more hours of potential warming up, and if not, try to find a place in West Yellowstone, and if not, well, I guess it’s a 5 hour drive.
So that kind of put a damper on the day. But, we were here and what else were we going to do? We figured we could wander around the geyser basin a bit. But with all the snow on the boardwalks and how cold it was, it really wasn’t all that much fun. We lasted maybe 20 minutes, then back into the visitor center where it was warm. At about 2:10 we headed out to get a seat for the show, then spent a chilly 20 minutes waiting.
There were a couple of ‘teaser’ eruptions that got people excited but then it stopped. Then, off in the distance a different geyser erupted (Beehive?) and sent up quite a spray. It was quite a distance off, but you could hear it clearly. As we all got excited about watching that, Old Faithful erupted. And not nearly as spectacularly as the other one, which was kind of disappointing. In fact, I said to Les, I think Beehive saw all the people gathered around Old Faithful and said “oh yeah?, hold my beer”.
It lasted about 5 minutes and then like a sports event ending, everyone headed for the parking lot. Victory was ours. But now we had to see about getting ‘home’. But first, we had to find the truck. Luckily, Les has a much better sense of direction than I do, and we managed to head pretty much the right way. (And as Marion will attest, I would not have. I might still be there…)
Along the way we came across a couple of ravens sitting on the driver’s side mirror and hood of a car. Apparently, the ravens like to get into cars and steal food. They’re everywhere. I don’t remember them from last time, so they may be a new nuisance. But it caused many people (including us) to stop and take their picture (and for some fools, to block the road while cars are trying to exit on snowy and icy roads. Not so clever).
Back in the truck it’s time to call road conditions and once again with kudos to Les’ legendary trip karma, the roads are now all open! Well hot damn. Let’s get the hell out of here!
But the lure of various attractions was strong. The tradeoff between ‘let’s get while the getting is good’ and ‘when are we ever going to be here again, let’s stop and see this’ kicked in. Plus, we missed our opportunity to use the restroom at the visitor’s center so that necessitated at least one stop.
We decided to stop at Midway Basin, home of the Grand Prismatic Pool. It’s the giant pool with the colorful edges that you see in all the pictures. But of course, those pictures are from the air. You can’t see all that from the ground. But still, we wanted to go have a look and see what we could see. Also, they had a bathroom there.
It was quite cold, and the wind was blowing. But it was likely the last thing we were going to see so we were undaunted. (Well, maybe a little daunted). The first problem was it was across the river and the bridge was covered in snow and was very slippery. We carefully made our way across to a steaming waterfall flowing down from the hill. We paused there for pictures and because it was a bit warmer from the steam.
Then it was a slow slippery trek up the hill on the boardwalk, dodging slipping and sliding tourists. For some reason it seemed like there were a lot of Japanese tourists at this particular spot. Les regretted not bringing gloves on the trip because he was faced with the choice of hanging onto the fence and freezing his hands off.
At the top of the hill there was a crater where a geyser had ‘blown up’ back in the day. These things do occasionally get rambunctious. Then the ‘loop’ out past a few smaller pools to the big one. The smaller pools had a bit of color and as expected we couldn’t see much of the big one. The wind was blowing directly towards us, which meant the steam was too. And it being warm, it fogged up our glasses and the camera lens. Occasional wind shifts let us get some pictures and actually the patterns from the ridges of mineral deposits were cool. We caught a glimpse of some of the color too.
We had somehow managed to miss this spot on the last trip, so we felt good to have seen it. But not as good as we felt getting safely back down to the truck and turning on the heat. Time to head back to the trailer.
But one more stop. We had passed Roaring Mountain a couple of times and Les had missed it both times as he attempted to not drive off the road. So when we passed it again, we stopped. “Mountain” is a bit of a misnomer but it’s a pretty tall hill and it’s “roaring” because it’s got steam vents coming out of it in various places. It looks like the side of a volcano or the remains after a forest fire (since all the trees are gone). It’s interesting from a geological standpoint but not especially attractive.
There was a raven there (of course) begging for food. And despite my (somewhat paltry) attempts to stop him, Les decided he needed a cookie, which he gratefully accepted. And then started following Les to the car. Les offered him a ride and he looked to be seriously considering it. But apparently, he was well taught by his parents not to accept treats from strangers and get into their cars. Just as well since I don’t think it would have ended well for either of us.
The roads were fine all the way back. In fact, much better than on the way down. But there were still nervous moments as we passed each opportunity for the road to be closed. But no flashing lights.
We got back by 5:30 and firmly decided we’ve received enough cosmic warnings that it was time to get out of Dodge. The only question remaining was whether to head out via the West Gate or back the way we came up north. That decision will depend on the weather overnight. If there’s no further snow or snow risk, the West Gate is the answer since a new road is always better than one previously traveled.
In anticipation we got more propane and filled up the truck and filled the water tank on the trailer. And one last meal of agglutinated mass.
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