Yellowstone #4 - Old Faithful

This will be the largest post by far. It's taken me several days to get the pictures ready for you, about 25 in all. Plus you get a free science lesson. All for free!

Old Faithful is, of course the most famous part of Yellowstone, and sees the most visitors every year. (Although, why you'd come all that way, and just see Old Faithful is beyond me.) The best thing about Old Faithful, is that is also the place where you can see the most thermological activity all at once. The map shows most of the named vents (springs, geysers, etc.) (not that you could actually tell what any of those words are). The entire route is about three miles. OK, here we go.

We got to Old Faithful early enough to see Grand geyser erupt. There are only 5-6 geysers that are regular enough for the rangers to bother predicting, and even then it's not exact. Grand is predicted, give or take a couple hours. So basically, you get there early and can wait up to four hours for it to go off. But, it is quite a thing to see. It is the largest predictable geyser in the world. (Yes, bigger than Old Faithful itself) and goes off about twice a day. That's a lot of pressure, and a lot of water! So, we got there to hit the first one, only to find out it just finished as we got there. So we decided to do the loop, wait for Castle to go off, and come back for the afternoon eruption.

This is called Pump Geyser. It's one of the ones that pretty much just goes all the time, so it obviously doesn't go very high.

This is called Doublet Pool. It's a hot spring. OK, science lesson time. Basically, it goes like this: water from rain, snow and things seeps down into the ground. Because Yellowstone is a volcano, you don't have to go down very far to get to heat, so the water heats up and comes back up to the surface. If it comes up without any drama, it's just a hot spring. If a lot of water is trying to come up where there is a little hole then the pressure builds up until it erupts as a geyser. (Just like when you put your finger over the nozzle of the hose.) And that's just the beginning!

This is Ear Spring (because it looks like an ear, those rangers are so creative!). The water coming out of different springs aren't all the same temperature. You can tell because the spring is almost white. I'll explain more about this later.

These are called the Lion Group. They are mostly just steam vents, but the steam comes out with such force that it sounds like roaring.

This is Sawmill Geyser. It goes off for like 20 minutes every hour or so, so there's a good chance of seeing it. It's incredibly noisy, just like a sawmill, and erupts about 6 feet in the air.

This is Beauty Pool. I personally think there are prettier pools in the park, but whatever.

This is Chromatic Pool and a good place to talk about the heat in hot springs. See, different kinds of algae grow in different temperatures of water. In the hottest springs (blue and white) no algae can grow. So, you can see in most springs including this one how the water gets cooler as it goes out from the center leaving vivid rainbow patterns.

This is Giant Geyser (next to Bijou and Mastiff) Giant is one of the largest geysers in the world...when it goes off which is measured in years. A lot of times there is more than one geyser/spring on the same underground vent and they effect each other. Giantess Geyser was in an eruption cycle while we were there and you could tell when she was going to go off by the other geysers around her.

Riverside Geyser is one I really wanted to see but didn't get to this time. The geyser actually shoots out at an angle over the river.

Morning Glory is one of the more famous springs. It used to be blue in the center and more white towards the outside, but over years and years of people throwing coins and other things into the spring, it actually cooled the water and destroyed the beauty of the pool.

After walking the "big loop" I met my parents at Castle Geyser to wait for it to go off. We waited a couple hours (we were early, but we got a good spot in the shade) and then got to watch it. The "castle" part is built up over hundreds, maybe thousands of years of eruptions. Overwhelming to think about, huh!

OK, I'll stop this post for now and continue later!