Geysers

Last weekend was our first time at Yellowstone National Park. Originally, we had planned to stay in the north area of the park. But due to two road closures within the park that would had have us doing a 250 mile detour, we changed our reservations to stay in the west area of the park. This is the geyser area and there were lots to see.

Our first afternoon there was cloudy and cold, maybe in the 40's. But the wind made it seem colder. The next day was very cold, but sunny. It was maybe around 20 degrees in the morning. Every time I took my hand out of my glove to take a picture it seemed like it froze instantly. It warmed up a little and the sun was nice.

The third day as we were heading out of the park, it was very cold and foggy. There was frost everywhere.

Our funny geyser story is this. We hiked up to a geyser that was off the beaten path, called Solitary geyser. Anna and I were standing quite close to it (although not beyond where it was indicated to stay back) looking at the colors and trying to see the formations inside the pool (which was hard to do as there was lots of steam). As we were standing there, I commented to Anna that you could hear the geyser and, very shortly after that, the geyser sent a spurt of water about 10 feet in the air. Anna and I both screamed as it had startled us and also because I was thinking we might get hit with scalding water. We didn't.

Frank had wandered off somewhere else and came running. He said he heard this "roar" and then us screaming and thought there was some kind of wildlife attacking. We all had a good chuckle afterward. Then we read the sign that said it erupts about every five minutes. We waited another 15 minutes or so to see it erupt again, but all it did was a burble.

This first set of pictures are some of the geysers we caught erupting. Sometimes it was a matter of timing and how long you wanted to wait. I bet you can all guess which geyser is the last one.

Tomorrow's pictures will be geyser colors.