Upper Geyser Basin

Little Cub Geyser

We packed up the trailer and headed to Upper Geyser Basin. I figured if we got there before 10 AM we would be able to park the trailer and walk the trails around Old Faithful and it worked! This is the largest of the Geyser Basins with Old Faithful at one end and Morning Glory Pool at the other. Our timing was poor to see Old Faithful, so we started the 3.5 mile trail around the Geyser Basin. The sky was cloudy and it sprinkled a couple of times, but nothing serious. So we enjoyed the geysers that go off almost constantly, the blue, black, and red pools bubbling away, and the fumaroles hissing at us as we passed. It’s always such a wonderland. It’s interesting to watch the young families who are viewing this for the first time, and remember when we first saw Yellowstone. As we went along none of the big geysers were going off, but Giant Geyser and Grotto Geyser are still impressive with their large cones and strange shapes. At the end of the trail were the two highlights of our day: Morning Glory Pool with its long clear share of blue water, white rock, and orange rim. It was about 12:30 and Riverside Geyser was expected to go off in the next 1 ½ hours so we decided to wait. Sure enough, at 1:15 we were treated to a huge spray of water up above 100 feet and then falling into Firehole River. We watched for about 15 minutes and then started to head back to the parking lot.  We never did see Old Faithful go off, even though it was in the right time frame on our return, but we were tired and hungry.

Morning Glory Pool

Then we headed off to West Thumb Geyser Basin. We reached there just in time for a ranger hike around the basin area. She did an excellent job of explaining about the Yellowstone Caldera, and the differences between pools, geysers, and paint pots. The paint pots actually weren't very interesting – they had gotten so much snow that the usual pots still had too much water to be bubbling with mud. Our talk was cut short when it began to lightning and thunder, but that was all right, we were ready to head to Flagg Ranch for our camp night. I had to traipse around in the mud to get our camper set-up, we have a small puddle in the back of our campsite. We had dinner at the Lodge – it was okay, but expensive. I can’t say I would recommend this for camping.