More Yellowstone Geysers, Pools and Waterfalls

A full day of touring Yellowstone today. We start off with stopping at the West Thumb Geyser Basin and walking the boardwalk. The hot springs are interesting to watch, but the two busloads of international students are the highlight of the stop: Jere and I hope that U.S. students act more respectful when touring Europe than this group of students. They are loud (one group is screaming out the French national anthem) and clowning around near the hotsprings. I can see how people fall into the hot springs and get burned after observing this group’s behavior. There are large numbers of international visitors at Yellowstone, especially at the popular areas of the park; this rowdy group of students is NOT typical of the international visitors—most are very friendly and very respectful of their fellow tourists.

Our next stop is at the Grant Visitor Center where they have an exhibit and a film about the 1988 wildfires that burned millions of acres of the park. It’s a very one-sided exhibit by the park, and all the exhibits and the film focus on the unavoidability of the fires and how the fires have helped the park. Interesting museum, but very “pro national park service”.

We drive up near the Old Faithful area to take a 7-mile hike. Long hike, but some wonderful things to see, including seeing the colorful steam coming off the Grand Prismatic Pool

and a great overhead view of the Grand Prismatic Pool:

We take a long break to cool off at Fairy Falls.

And then walk a little farther to view a very pretty geyser that spouts off for 3-4 minutes every 30 seconds, Imperial Geyser.

On the hike back we encounter a large bison near the path and take a detour to keep the required 25 feet away from it.

We are exhausted after the hike and drive down to the Old Faithful Lodge for Bison Meatloaf for dinner, before driving back to the campground. On our way back we drive around another geyser area where I get a cool picture of the sky reflecting in the Fountain Geyser.

And we see a large herd of buffalo in the road, so we stop and watch them for awhile. There are some newborn calves in the herd, and several of the bulls are fighting/playing with each other. They have no fears of our large truck and walk right next to it.