Friday, August 21, 2009

Old Faithful and the Stupid Geyser

This post was intended to be posted on Monday, August 17.


I got up early this morning in Yellowstone and decided to head up to the Old Faithful area to beat the crowds. Along the way, stopped and took a picture of Kepler Cascades (left). Little did I know that Yellowstone is chock full of these types of rapids and waterfalls.














When I got to Old Faithful and parked my car, I had about thirty minutes until the next eruption, so I decided to hike up to Observation Point, which I had read gave you a good view of the eruption and away from the bleachers full of tourists. It was about 300 feet up, so it was a bit of a hike, but I made it with several minutes to spare. This picture shows the tail end of the eruption. It was the first opportunity I had to ask another person to take my picture. All in all, it was a nice view, but the eruption seemed a bit small from that high and far away, so I decided I would try and take in another one from ground level and amongst the thousands of others.

After Old Faithful, I started wandering through the rest of the geyser basin. Interesting, but I got geysered out pretty quickly. I came across the viewing area for the Grand Geyser, the tallest predictable (yeah, right) geyser in the world. It was predicted to go off at ten plus or minus two hours. I was now 11:15 and it hadn't gone off since early in the morning, so I figured I would have just a short wait. By the appointed hour of noon (ten plus two), nothing but minor eruptions. By 12:20 I had been sitting in the sun with no sunscreen (it was cloudy and twenty nine degrees when I left my campsite), so I decided to give up. Of course, ten minutes after I walked off, it erupted and I could hear the hoots and cheers of the crowd. This picture is the best I could get from where I was at the time. Stupid geyser!




Here's the obligatory shot of Old Faithful at its peak from ground level. After that, I was pretty sunbaked and decided to head back to camp. Ended up taking a nap and not doing a heck of a lot the rest of the day.







On the way back to camp, I crossed the Continental Divide and found this lake perched right on the divide at about 9000 feet covered in lily pads with frogs - not what I would have expected at this elevation. The interesting thing about this tiny lake (Lake Isa) is that water from it flows both east and west (since its on the Divide) and some ends up in the Pacific Ocean and the rest ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.





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