Our day started really early by 5:40 AM. We directly walked to yellowstone lake to watch the sunrise. We spent some time there as the sun rose and painted the mountains. Serene.
After watching sun rise we got ready and checked out of the cottage. Again as I mentioned earlier you will have to try to stay inside the park so that you can avoid the long drives to enter and exit the park. Also you can spend time at the park so late, and be near to your lodge.
Our first stop was west thumb Geyser area. From yellowstone lake lodge it was about one hour drive to the west thumb. We stopped in between to take photos and have breakfast.
We reached the west thumb geyser basin by 8:30AM. This is a 0.7 mile loop, shore side. You see all this hydrothermal activities beside yellowstone lake. It was surprising to see thermal activities even inside the lake! The west thumb basin is also home for the deepest thermal pool-Abyss pool in yellowstone. It is 50ft deep and bright blue in color because of the heat of the water. You can see yellowstone lake in the background.
The below image is the fishing cone at West thumb geyser. It was used to be a geyser with major eruptions but as time passed the water cooled down and the eruptions decreased. Also, long back people used to fish in the lake and immediately dip the fish with the hook in the fishing cone to cook the fish!
From west thumb we drove to iconic old faithful geyser. This is one of the most famous spot in the park, where you can witness 100 to 200 ft predictable eruptions of old faithful. The magma under the geyser heats up the water and pressurize the water to be erupted. The eruption happens roughly between 60 to 90 mins at old faithful. We reached the old faithful by 9:30AM, and an eruption was predicted within 15 mins. We waited to witness the eruption with lots of curiosity and there it was, magnificent!
The eruption can lasts from 1 to 5 mins. This geyser attracts the most number of visitors because of its predictability. When you are there, you would feel like mother nature is setting up the show and you wait with others all around the stage! And then she performs and you will be amazed. After the eruption we decided to hike the geyser hill. It is about 5 miles trail, but we decided to go till 'The Grand geyser-worlds Predictable tallest geyser'. This hike really worth the effort since this is one of the most active thermal area inside the park. You go through lots of hot spring pools, geysers and many interesting features. One of the stops we made was for castle geyser, it was fuming so strongly as if it was going to erupt.
We waited few mins and since we didnt know when it will erupt we continued our hike. Just mins after we saw a big eruption from Beehive geyser. It was a real pretty sight, the eruption can go upto 200ft high and lasts 5 mins. Though we couldnt experience it from beside the geyser we watched it from the trail.
From castle geyser we continued to The Grand geyser. We reached there by 10:45AM, and we saw some people waiting there on the benches. The sign said the next eruption can be anywhere between 10:40 to 1:15 PM! Such a long window, but people were waiting. We decided to join them too, and finally by 11:40 AM, the geyser went off. It was marvelous and huge, and well worth the wait. It indeed is a grand eruption which lasts almost 10 mins.
Another interesting hydro thermal feature was sawmill geyser eruption. After watching Grand geyser this is much small in size and erupts very often. The eruption can reach the trail you walk and can drench you. It was a fun experience. Me and my hubby was making fun of it saying,"This geyser is getting jealous seeing all people going and watching The grand, and so it is trying to get attention by drenching people" :D
Depression pool at Geyser hill.
Once we were done with exploring the Geyser hill we drove to Black Sand Geyser area. This was a very short 0.5 mile round trip walk. The area was beautiful with many thermal pools emitting steams.
One of the very scenic pool was sunset pool. The blue colored bubbling hot water was surrounded by yellow and orange algae. This algae are called Thermophiles. They are bacteria who loves heat and can survive on hot water. If the water is bright blue, that means the water is extremely hot. If you see yellow or orange colors, that means they are algae living on warm water.
In all these pictures you see steam getting emitted from the pools. They are filled with supher+CO2. It can be sickening at times. To me, i got so many burned marks all over my nose,lips and forehead.Same with my hubby too. I dont know if it is caused by the hot steams, but it was kinda bad.
After black sand basin we drove to biscuit basin. This was another 0.7 mile round trip. This has biscuit like deposits around the pool which gave it its name.
From biscuit basin we drove to Midway geyser. It is home to two very large thermal features in the park. Magnificent Grand prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser. The run off from these goes to firehole river, an aptly named river. Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the park and 120 ft deep! The colors are just mind blowing and you can walk through the trail which is right through it. You would see all colors of steam getting emitted from it, blue yellow and red. This is a real marvel.
There are benches where you can sit and synch in the awesomeness of the Grand Prismatic. We did that, but as I mentioned earlier I couldnt appreciate the hot steam coming to my face. I was feeling it as unhealthy in my pea sized brain :D We continued on the trails after 5 to 10 mins.
In front of Excelsior geyser.Excelsior geyser emits gallons of hot water to firehole river. This is a really huge geyser and will leave you in awe.
Our last stop was fountain paint pots. This was a short 0.5 mile loop.This area had so many mud volcanic activities. So you would see clay like mud bubbling up instead of water.
Silex Spring at Fountain paint pot Springs:
This was the end of our yellowstone National Park visit. We covered most of the park in 2 days, but had we had 1 more day to spend we would have definitely explored Lamar Valley. But we had more exciting things in plan and we ended our day at the park by around 6PM and started driving to Helena for the stay. We watched more elks as were exiting.
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