Yellowstone - Day 4c - Old Faithful Basin

August 26, 2018

We still had a lot of daylight left after we finished our hike, so we drove a couple of miles more to visit the Old Faithful Basin. We barely had enough time to determine when Old Faithful would go off and rush to get to the balcony over the front entrance to the Old Faithful Inn, which is my favorite place from which to watch Old Faithful.  We found seats near the front of the benches and visited with the people sitting around us for a couple of minutes before the show began.

Show is starting

Here comes the water spout

Near the end of the erruption

Then we returned to the Visitor Center to figure out what we wanted to do,  as we didn't have enough time to see everything, and several more of the geysers go off on a schedule.  We got a list of times for a few of the geysers that would erupt while we were there.  I also made sure to get the location of the Anemone Geyser as I think it is the best one for an ADHD person to watch. I goes off every few minutes and cycles through filling the basin, making the boil, then geyser, and then having the basin empty in a few minutes.

The trail soon crosses the Firehole River

View looking back at Old Faithful Inn

Anemone filling up and boiling

And going off

And draining

Anemone  Geyser is actually two geysers that are interconnected and close together. How one goes off can affect the other. I think we were looking at Little Anemone. Click here for the full story on them.

We then had to hurry to get over to Castle Geyser to be there for the window time of the eruption. It went off early in the possible time and gave us great views in the ever cloudier sky.

View of the Firehole River and Castle Geyser

I still had to stop to capture pictures of colors and shapes....

....And this marmot

This looked like a painting by a person, not some lichens

I was disappointed that Riverside Geyser would not go off this day until after dark

Julie in front of erupting Castle Geyser

Castle Geyser erupting - water pours over the right side

I was about walked out at this point and was getting blisters on my toes. Julie, of course, was still going strong. She wanted to go on to Daisy Geyser which was about to erupt. I wanted to start the walk back to the car.  We decided she could do about the same amount of walking, if she visited Daisy Geyser and a couple of more of the neighboring geysers, then walk on to Black Sand Basin. I should be able to get there in time to pick her up. 

I got there in plenty of time even with time to walk most of the basin and take a few pictures. I was was almost back to the car when Julie arrived. I waited for her to check out the basin before we left. 

Supper pretty views here. That is a stream side in the background

A view down that stream side

Another field view

I had promised Julie that we would look for wildlife on the way home, so we turned west at Madison and checked out several pullouts. We lucked out on the last on before it got too dark for pictures and found several elk, including a young bull.  We also watched a cow swim the river.

We took this picture from the road which was about six feet above the elk - hence the foreshortening

Cow elk crossing the Madison River

By this time it was dark and we still had another thirty minutes of driving to get back to camp.... and supper.... and a campfire... and making plans for the following day.  We still have three more days to go.  Stay tuned.

I look forward to your comments.