A day of geysers

We drove back into Yellowstone National Park today, with the intention of seeing the geyser basin around Old Faithful.

The sky to the west was a little clearer this morning so we could see the Grand Teton as we headed west.

One of the places I noticed as we were leaving the park last night was a small lake right at a Continental Divide sign... I wanted to stop to get more information about that - just a small lake with lily pads on it!

Right at the Continental Divide.

 Backbone of a Continent
The Continental Divide is marked by simple roadside signs merely hinting at the enormity of the boundary they represent. This imaginary line winds its way through the mountains from Alaska to Mexico, separating the waters that flow into the Pacific Ocean from those that flow into the Atlantic Ocean.
Today we look forward to the meandering drive and ultimate arrival at the summit of the divide. But what about the continent's early travelers? This tangled, beautiful stretch of mountains rose up before them, posing an immense challenge that required days or even weeks of travel.

 As we had seen at South Pass, emigrants needed to find a wide less difficult pass to ease their trip west across the Continental Divide.

In Yellowstone, the Continental Divide makes quite a few interesting bends and turns - look at the map in Figure 3 on this site: https://www.yellowstonetreasures.com/books/yellowstone-treasures-guidebook-5e/book-excerpts/understanding-the-continental-divide/

Big Deal for a Little Lake
Other than the brief summer months spent carpeted by beautiful yellow pond lilies, this sliver of water seems rather insignificant. Looks can be deceiving!
As spring runoff empties into Isa lake, the water swells and overflows its tiny borders. When this happens, the lake does something extraordinary. Not only does it empty into two oceans, but it does so backwards. The east drainage flows into the Pacific, while the west drainage makes the long trek to the Gulf of Mexico.

After learning about Isa Lake, we headed on to the Old Faithful area of the park.

We stopped at the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center

We stopped to get the next eruption times for some of the predictable geysers, including Old Faithful.

We joined quite a number of other park visitors to watch Old Faithful erupt.

Old Faithful is not the biggest, or the longest, but it is one of the, if not the most, predictable of the geysers.

We then decided to walk through the Upper Geyser Basin - we ended up walking down to Morning Glory pool, and then back up to see Grand and Beehive geysers erupt.

Morning Glory pool - an information plaque indicated that its blue color is diminishing because park guests seem unable to stop themselves from throwing things into the pool...

We stopped by to see Giant Geyser, but considering the last eruptions were listed as January 28, 2010, September 28, 2015, and July 7, 2017, we didn't think it was likely to erupt while we were there.

Giant Geyser

We headed over to wait for Grand Geyser to go off - and it was Grand!

 I remember when we were in the park in 1990, David and I wanted to see Grand erupt... Dwayne and my Dad weren't as interested - so they headed off in the van (and got to see some moose), while David and I headed to watch for Grand to erupt. There was a storm threatening, and just as Grand was starting to erupt, as I recall, it was hailing and pouring! Thankfully, that was not the case today!

Grand Geyser

Grand Geyser

 As Grand was finishing, there was a park ranger along the path encouraging everyone to head over to Beehive. While Beehive Geyser is not "predictable" by "it last erupted at 'this' date/time for 'this' long, so the next eruption will be around 'y'"... it does have signs that it is about to erupt, and those signs had been in evidence while Grand was showing off. So... we headed off to Beehive...

We didn't quite get there before it started erupting - you can see that there were a LOT of people on the boardwalk watching, so we were probably in a better spot anyway.

The ranger had said something to the effect of "if Old Faithful could be compared to a garden hose, Beehive is like a firehose".

Beehive was quite impressive, even from the distance away from which we were watching it.

From there, we headed back through the Geyser Basin - we could see Old Faithful Inn off in the distance across the basin.

Another of the beautiful pools in the basin - this one is named "Heart Spring"

 We had thought that we might make it to a hike to see the "mud pots" - bubbling pools of mud - but we decided we had enjoyed enough by the time we made it back to the Old Faithful area and headed back to the rig (about 2 hours away).

When we got back, we got to sit and chat with fellow Bluebirders Scott and Brenda - we had been parked near them at Casper, but got to talk with them more tonight. They are from the southwestern part of Virginia, and he had had raised beef cattle, so we had many things to talk about!

Some stats from the 3 geysers we saw erupt today: Old Faithful erupted for about 2.5 minutes, Grand for 11.5 minutes, and Beehive for 4.5 minutes (based on when our pictures started and when they ended).