Yellowstone (day 2)
Spoiler : it erupted!
Headed over to the Old Faithful area this morning (about a 45 minute drive) in time to check out the visitor center (more stamps) and gift shop (of course) before heading out to watch the geyser.
Prediction was for "10:25 +/- 10 minutes", so we go there a little before 10:15. We'll, a bunch of false alarms and some squirmy kids, it finally erupted at 10:40. Guess it's not a perfectly precise science.
It was fun to see (and a requirement for visiting Yellowstone), but on an overcast day, perhaps not that magnificent.
Afterwards we walked around the boardwalks they have set up and saw the upper and lower geyser basins nearby. Some really cool ones in there, though no more eruptions for us today.
We ended at Morning Glory Pool, which was very colorful and impressive.
We learned how the colors are caused by temperature variations that make various portions of the spring hospitable for different forms of life that are different colors.
Headed back to the Old faithful inn for lunch (total 2.5 miles here) and Wow, this building is fantastic.
(That's a photosphere picture, the beams are actually quite straight)
The girls got to play on the rocking chairs upstairs while we waited for lunch. They loved it.
Lunch was a buffet with some excellent elk and Bison suausage (3 days in a row eating bison bow and this might have been the best).
Afterwards we drove North to Grand Prismatic Spring. There were a ton of people here marching through fog that made the whole scene a little surreal.
When we got up to it, you could definitely see the colors, but not the grandeur.
So we loaded back in the car and headed over to the overlook trailhead (fairy falls trail), and that was well worth the extra 1.5 miles.
Headed back to the trailer for dinner and s'mores with our camp neighbors (with 3 girls inder 10). Got a recommendation for an ice cream shop that sells "square ice cream" in Idaho, so might check that out on the way home.
And we didn't really get rained on much today. Bonus!
Tomorrow is a drive up the west side of Yellowstone to Mammoth Hot Springs and Montana, and a welcome night in a hotel (hence the asterisk behind 5 nights in Yellowstone yesterday) as we meet up with Grandma and Grandpa Wilson. Lots more to see here, so should be fun.
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