With a fresh day before us, and our propensity to wake early, we headed to the western section of Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful, early in the morning, determined to create a better day for ourselves.
We arrived at Old Faithful Geyser only to find that he/she was less than faithful. While Old Faith erupts, on average every 88 minutes ... we sat to watch the eruption only to give up after the predicted time had elapsed and an extra 40 minutes had past ... Old Faithful was less than faithful. We took off on a hike around the Upper Geyser Basin ... about four miles ... and Old Faithful erupted 2 hours and 39 minutes after its last eruption (must have a large degree of variance ... the statistician in Paul was calculating the number of different ways that the average time and its variance from average could be conveyed to more accurately represent the statistical variability ... and there is a website, Geyser Times, that predicts geyser eruptions ... and they were also off on this prediction).
We saw countless thermal features ... geysers (water erupting), fumaroles (steam emitting), springs (bubbling or flowing hot waters), and mud pots (water mixed with sulphuric acid that decomposes the surrounding soil) all along the Firehole River (and many pouring their heated water into the river). The colors come from thermophilic bacteria that grow in the ponding water ... the bluer the water, the hotter the water and the color comes from various cyanobacteria ... in some cases, the blue comes from sulphur deposits lining the pond and reflecting the sunlight. The yellow and orange colors comes from thermophilic bacteria that grow is slightly less hot waters. Red color frequently comes from iron that might be in the soil surrounding the thermal features. We both took endless photographs (which we will not inflict on our blog), but we were both entranced and delighted by the artist's palette of colors and the sense of earth's activity beneath our feet. There are only four thermally geologic areas like this in the world ... one in Russia (Kamchatka), Iceland, Chile ... and, Yellowstone National Park.
We rewarded ourselves with lunch at the Yellowstone Lodge ... and marveled at the architecture, both of us realizing that it would be unlikely that we'd ever see such classic park architectural beauty built again ... and realizing how close this lodge came to burning down just a few years ago.
We did manage to get to the Visitor's Center ... watched a movie (interesting movie about being safe in the park ... featuring clips of visitors who got too close to bison and were thrown and elk who used their antlers on cars who ventured too close). This time, Old Faithful, went off within 10 minutes of the predicted time and we were in place to capture the burst of water as the eruption occurred (along with hundreds of other tourists ... this is tourist season ... and we are tourists).
We continued our search for a fuse (no luck) and realized after trying another Yellowstone General Store that we were in the midst of a "food desert" ... we'll have to leave the park (no small task for such a large park) to find real food. Fortunately, we are still relatively well-provisioned, but are getting increasing creative in our dinners.
Bambi is patiently waiting for us ... suffering under the swarms of mosquitoes (but keeping them all outside) and keeping us cool with his magnificent air conditioning ... yes, it is warm in Yellowstone.
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