Day 3:
All Yellowstone, all day! We were all awake again by the time my alarm went off at 6am, excited to get going, until we realized that we have no electricity here and couldn't start the coffee pot! Oh well, we'll just have to wait a while. We drove straight to the Fairy Falls trailhead parking lot and headed for the Grand Prismatic Spring overlook. We saw the spring from the ground level four years ago and were immediately curious about the overlook platform in the distance, so we found it the next day and got a much better view of its colors. We wanted to get mom there to see it too, so we hiked the ~2 mile round trip. Because the air temperature was pretty cool in the morning, there was a lot more steam coming off the spring, so we didn't get to see it in its full glory but we could still see the blue and orange colors, as well as Excelsior geyser beyond the spring. The Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest in the US and the 3rd largest in the world, at 370 feet in diameter, and well worth the walk to see it from above. Then it was on to Old Faithful to see one of Yellowstone's best known landmarks, named for the fact that it predictably erupts every 44 minutes to 2 hours. While we were waiting, we heard a man behind us talking about how he has seen Old Faithful go off 150 times, and in all that time he had only seen the nearby Beehive geyser go off twice. Beehive eruptions are far less predictable than Old Faithful, with it sometimes going several days without erupting at all. Best guess from what we heard was every 15-19 hours, give or take 4 hours, so you could easily sit there all day and never see it. Just as this guy was finishing his conversation, a small geyser, about 6-10 feet high, started erupting near Beehive. This was Beehive's indicator geyser, telling us that Beehive was actually going to go off within the next 15 minutes - what luck! Beehive shoots water 200 feet into the sky and carries on for 5 minutes or more, and we got to see it while waiting for Old Faithful, which started to spew as soon as Beehive was finished. Double bonus! After checking out the lobby of the Old Faithful Lodge, we found a seat for mom and Margo and I made the 2 mile round trip walk to see Beehive and the other geysers and springs close up. Once back from our geyser tour, we hit the gift shops and then headed back to the campground so we could enjoy a campfire dinner and s'mores! Tomorrow morning we will hit Mammoth Hot Springs and the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River before moving on to Pocatello, ID for the night.
Note: check back for photos. We are still figuring out how to get the camera photos where we want them!
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