Excelsior, Grand Prismatic & Old Faithful

After leaving the Lower Geyser Basin, we drove through Firehole Lake Drive.  We came to Great Fountain Geyser.

 

But we couldn't wait all day for it to erupt. 

Next we came to White Dome Geyser.

 

Its cone was over 12 feet high and unlike Liberty Cap cone in Mammoth Springs, this geyser is still active.

Firehole Lake is surrounded by hot springs

 

 

and baby geysers.

 

These gold color microorganisms and grasses grew in the streams.

 

 

After seeing hot springs, geysers, fumaroles and mudpots for nearly a day and a half now, we thought we would just head straight towards Old Faithful to watch this old predictable geyser.  But when we drove past Midway Geyser Basin, I told Chuck we needed to turn around because this looked like one more hot springs that we would want to see.

 

It was later in the morning and the sites were starting to get very crowded with tourists but we are so glad we stopped. 

We walked up the boardwalk toward Excelsior Geyser...

 

Its last big eruption was in 1985.

 

It pumps more than 4,000 gallons of boiling water per minute over the crater rim into Firehole River.

The crater rim of the geyser is huge.

As I was watching it, this "tornado" formed in the steam rising up.

The most beautiful hot spring in the entire park is Grand Prismatic Spring. 

Its colors were beautiful and varied.

What was really unusual to us was that the steam rising off the springs was different colors too but primarily blue.  We sat on a nearby bench for as long as we "politely" could to watch it before letting someone else sit and enjoy it for a while.  Hope you enjoy watching it too!

We walked past Opal Pool...

 

and Turquoise Pool...

 

...which were pretty too but not nearly as beautiful as Grand Prismatic Springs.

                

We left Midway Geyser Basin determined to go straight to Old Faithful.  But when we got to Biscuit Basin, we thought we better check it out just to make sure there was not another spring or geyser we would not want to miss.  We did a drive-thru...

 

and saw some more buttery-biscuit colored hot springs...

...and a geyser...

 

and a couple of guys fly-fishing in Firehole River.

 

If Biscuit Basin had been our first stop in Yellowstone, we would have gone "WOW!".  After all the hot springs and geysers we had seen for 1 1/2 days, we now said "wow!"  We were approaching "thermal overload," but we still had to see the "centerpiece" of the park:  Old Faithful.

We drove to the Old Faithful area, parked, and walked to the ol' geyser.  All the benches near Old Faithful were nearly empty so we figured it must have just gone off.  We walked over to the Visitor Center and found out we had to wait about another hour for it to go off.  So we walked through the Visitor Center and Museum and over to a gift shop and then back to a shaded area to wait for Old Faithful to erupt. 

I had been to Yellowstone when my parents and I did our summer vacation trips out west in a pop-up camper.  There are just a few things I remember like Custer's Last Stand, 5 minutes to see the Grand Canyon and I remember seeing Old Faithful and the stinky sulphur smell.  When we were walking around today, I remembered the area around Old Faithful Inn and the stores being very shady but now they are not.  I'm sure part of the reason is new buildings built in the area since the early 70's but part of the reason it was no longer shady may have been because of the big forest fire in 1988.  

People started sitting on the benches to wait for Old Faithful to erupt.

 

Then, nearly right on schedule, Old Faithful erupted.

 

Year after year for who knows how long, Old Faithful has faithfully erupted for millions of visitors.  How cool is that!