Our initial plan for the day was to go see the Grand Prismatic Pool before the crowds got heavy, since we had trouble getting through this area yesterday and figured it was going to be tough. It turned out that was a bad plan, because the fog was so terrible you really couldn’t see anything. Here’s a picture of one of the falls coming from the Excelsior Geyser, showing how heavy the fog was in the background.
So, we gave up on Grand Prismatic Spring for a while and went to the Biscuit Basin so we could take the trail to Mystic Falls and the Biscuit Basin Overlook. The Mystic Falls themselves were very beautiful, as seen here.
However, we felt the real gem of this trail was the Biscuit Basin Overlook, which gave a great view of the hydrothermal features in the area, amplified by the cold air (the featured image of this article above).
After we hiked back down from the Biscuit Basin Overlook, we headed back to the Grand Prismatic Pool and had much better luck with the view, but much worse luck with the parking (we had to park on the side of the road). As was promised, the Grand Prismatic Pool didn’t look all that great from ground level, but it certainly gave a sense of scale and an up-close view of the outer edges that would be hard to get otherwise. We thought that the Excelsior Geyser was more impressive from the ground boardwalk.
However, there is a better way to view the Grand Prismatic Pool from the overlook off of the Fairy Falls Trail, which we headed to next.
After viewing the magnificent Grand Prismatic Spring from the overlook, we continued to the Fairy Falls. While the Fairy Falls did not have as much volume as the Mystic Falls, their height made up for it.
On our way back from Fairy Falls, we passed the Grand Prismatic Pool, much later in the day, and noticed that the deep blue of the pool was reflecting into the mist rising from it.
Once we returned to the truck from the Mystic Falls trail, we decided to head back up to the Old Faithful area to do some shopping and get some treats and maybe get lucky and hit the Castle Geyser while we were there, which it just so turned out to be nearly perfect timing. Here’s the eruption of Castle Geyser.
It’s hard to believe how lucky we’ve been with geyser eruption timing, given that as we were returning up to the visitor center from seeing the Castle Geyser erupt, we saw Old Faithful erupt for the 4th time, but didn’t get a picture.
Following the Old Faithful eruption and subsequent ice cream and shopping, we continued toward the Black Sand Basin to check out some of the remaining hydrothermal features in the area. Many of these features are like those found in the other areas, so I’ll spare you the complete details, but there were a couple of honorable mentions, the first of which was the Emerald Pool.
It was along this walk that we concluded that they used about every word imaginable related to blue, turquoise, etc. because of the names we have encountered so far. To drive this point further, here’s the opalescent pool.
The remainder of the evening was spent waiting for the eruption of the Great Fountain Geyser, which was off the Firehole Lake Road in the Lower Geyser Basin. The eruption prediction of this geyser is much less accurate (+/- 2 hours), so we waited for quite a while. During the build up to the eruption, we got to experience the sunset reflecting off the pool surrounding the geyser seen here.
We also got to see the nearby White Dome Geyser erupt 3 times while we were waiting. Here’s one of the eruptions.
As you can see, it was really starting to get dark. By the time the Great Fountain Geyser erupted, it was dark enough to see the Milky Way band in the sky and certainly dark enough that we couldn’t capture anything on camera. That is not to say that the eruption was not impressive though, because when it did erupt, it was absolutely fantastic. At one point, it exploded with such volume that a wave washed over the edge of the pool surrounding the geyser big enough that you could clearly see it in the near darkness at the time. We continued to watch the eruption for the better part of a half hour, and when we left, it was still going. Eruptions typically last between 45 minutes and an hour for this geyser. That’s quite a finale to yet another wonderful day in Yellowstone!