Yellowstone, Day 2
Greetings to you all.
Today we did a tour of the Lower Loop, including the Norris Geyser Valley.
We were up early, drove to a site near Yellowstone Lake and had a fast breakfast. Oatmeal is easy to fix when your kitchen travels with you in the back of the van.
It took some time, but Xavier did eat his chocolate oatmeal. I was skeptical, but it have a good flavor.
Once Xavier finished and hit the restroom (or "drop vault" as they are oft called), we hit the trail—another boardwalk around several springs and paint pots.
The paint pots were small, but met Xavier's expectation. Later on the path we came upon a hole where a new paint pot (or mud puff) was forming. This one became Xavier's second favorite feature in the park after the Dragon's Mouth. He talked about the new paint pot the rest of the day.
He made sure I took a picture of it for him. It's the picture to the left.
The trail had a number of interesting features, including several boiling springs. Some of the springs had the crystal blue water in them. We learned later that the crystal blue colored water is at 165° or so.
One of the features Xavier found fun was a spot where, in the 1800s, people would fish Yellowstone Lake, hook a trout, then drop the trout into a steam vent to cook it without taking it off the hook.
Xavier thought the idea of that amusing and pretended to cook an imaginary fish over the vent area.
The walk held many other features that kept Xavier's attention. At the start of the walk, he was not all too happy about another trek across a boardwalk, especially after yesterday at Mammoth Hot Springs.
Xavier eventually told us that this was not his idea of camping. Apparently, his idea was to load up all the supplies, have a camp, but not go anywhere away from the camp.
We finished our tour of the features just as the crowds began to arrive. It was approaching 10:00 AM, the time the crowds descend to see the sites.
When we arrived, less than ten cars were in the lot. As we left, the lot was full with a hundred or so cars.
Our next stop was Old Faithful. We made use of the facilities once more, then headed down the road.
We arrived at the Old Faithful site and found a place to park. That was not easy even with our van. We ended up fitting ourselves in between two large RVs.
The geyser just started going off as we arrived and we saw part of its steam plume above the trees.
Being hungry, we decided to look around the lodge area and have lunch first, then pick up the next eruption about :90 minutes later.
As it turned out, the place we ate our lunch at was perfect for watching Old Faithful. As we ate, other geysers in the area erupted.
Old Faithful erupted more or less on schedule to a large crowd of onlookers, Xavier being one of them.
After Old Faithful went back to peculating, we walked the rest of the geyser trail.
At one point we had to decide which way to go, left or right. we chose right, but we should have chosen left. Less than a minute after we went right another geyser (on the left path) erupted. It shot higher than Old Faithful and lasted longer. Its spray fell on the boardwalk and the crowd of people standing there. They all shouted with joy for the experience.
We found another geyser, one of the several "most predictable" geysers in the park. We sat and watched it until a visitor passed by and said it had already erupted. We did not want to wait another two and a half hours for its next eruption, though it would have been spectacular. The geyser was large, it's vent about twenty feet in diameter.
We did come upon another geyser about to erupt, another predictable geyser named Daisy. It's schedule put it minutes away, so we hastened out pace to make the time.
We did make it in time. Daisy erupted spectacularly. In the background, Old Faithful was going off again. Fortunately, Rebecca got a picture of Daisy with Old Faithful in the background.