Old Faithful – Upper Geyser Basin

Today we packed up the camper and headed to the Old Faithful area known as the Upper Geyser Basin. We got there just in time to see a whole series of geyser eruptions, starting with the namesake, shown above.

After the Old Faithful Eruption, we saw the Daisy Geyser, but we only managed to capture video as the camera was getting soaked with water spraying from the geyser. Maybe at some point we can get the video uploaded.

After the Daisy Geyser eruption, we proceeded to the Grand Geyser, our favorite of the geyser eruptions of the day. This one was quite a wait, I think at over an hour, but the eruption was very impressive. Here you can see both the big geyser and the adjacent Turban Geyser both erupting in tandom.

That was 3 geyser eruptions well before lunch, which we considered to be a great fortune in timing. We decided to take a little time to look at some of the springs before the next geyser eruption. One of the interesting features is this one, Liberty Pool, which was strange because it apparently isn’t hot enough to keep the grass from growing near it, unlike most of what we had seen in both this geyser basin and the other basin we visited yesterday.

There were also some formations that were quite weird, such as the Beehive Geyser, which gets its name for obvious reasons:

The next geyser eruption was Old Faithful taken from the overlook, where we ate lunch while we waited. This view of Old Faithful was definitely interesting, but we prefer seeing it from the ground.

The next geyser eruption was the Riverside Geyser, which was quite the wait, similar to the wait for Grand Geyser, but it did not disappoint.

We didn’t stay for the whole eruption because it just takes so long (20 minutes) and definitely gets less intense as time goes on, but it was well worth the wait.

Our next main attraction was the Morning Glory Pool, which lives up to the hype of how beautiful it is.

What is sad is how the sign near it really focused on shaming people for throwing things into the pool, explaining that they have to remove stuff from the pool every year, because it plugs up the spring, reducing the temperature, and killing the colorful beauty that it has.

The next feature we saw was the Punch Bowl Spring, which we thought was interesting because it constantly bubbled and had the shape true to its name.

All in all, this area really lives up to its hype. We didn’t see everything, and I’m not sure it’s possible to see everything in just a day, so we’ll be back tomorrow!