Midnight Sun Where The Hot Springs Blow

The obligatory picture by the sign

One of the hot springs we saw

Old Faithful in all its glory

Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River

The stunning Lower Falls surrounded by the beautiful canyon walls that gave this park its name 

            Okay, first of all, I just have to say that this lyric has always kind of annoyed me because hot springs don’t really “blow”. Geysers do. But, anyway, it fit for today’s post. Yesterday I mentioned that I had an activity planned out for today that I was pretty excited about. Well, I finally got on the bus tour up to Yellowstone for the day! I’d been meaning to do it all season, and finally got to go today. It was me and fifteen other guests on the bus, plus the driver/guide.

            We left from the lodge at about 8:30 this morning. The first quick stop we made was at Flagg Ranch, just below the south border of Yellowstone, to pick up a couple more people. We also made a quick stop at the entrance of the park. Warren, the driver, took pictures of all of us in front of the Yellowstone sign. Early on the drive he told us that he’s originally from Oregon, and this is his seventh season leading the bus tours here. His wife works in the reservations department. They both work here in the summer, Colorado in the winter, and they travel in between. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

            Our next stop was at an area that had several hot springs and mud pots. Yellowstone is home to the greatest concentration of geothermal features (mud pots, hot springs, and geysers) in the world, and they’re the main reason that it became the first national park in 1872. The hot springs especially are very beautiful, since they have such crazy colors. They’re also the reason that Yellowstone is one of the more dangerous of the national parks. There are cases every year of people illegally stepping off of the boardwalks around the hot springs and getting too close to take pictures. The boardwalks are there because the ground near the hot springs is often very thin, and usually when people walk on it, they break through, fall into the hot spring, and literally boil to death. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called natural selection.

            We walked around that area for a while, getting pictures and enjoying the beauty of the hot springs. Our next stop was at the most famous geyser in the world, Old Faithful (or Old Slightly Irregular, as the employees call it). The beautiful Old Faithful Inn is, appropriately, very close to it, and most of us ate lunch on their upper balcony, which has a great view of the geyser. It went off about twenty minutes after we arrived. The eruption lasted about three minutes, with water shooting up to about 150 feet into the air. It was definitely an impressive spectacle.

            After the eruption finished, I explored the inside of the beautiful inn until it was time to return to the bus. It had a very rustic feel inside, with nearly everything made of wood, a large fireplace in the center of the lobby, and some rocking chairs placed around it.

            The next stop after Old Faithful was to see the largest hot spring in the park, Grand Prismatic. It’s considered the third largest hot spring in the world, with the water in it getting up to 200 degrees. The colors in this spring are really amazing, with deep blue water in middle, turning yellow, then orange, then brown around the edges. It was drizzling a little when we got out, so I decided not to bring my camera. I knew this wouldn’t be my only chance to see it anyway.    

            We spent about twenty minutes walking around the boardwalk the surrounded the beautiful hot spring, before the cold, wet air drove us back to the shelter of the bus. It was a lot colder in Yellowstone than it was at the lodge, which I wasn’t too surprised about. The elevation throughout Yellowstone is about a thousand feet more than the lower park, so naturally it was colder there.

            After the hot springs, our next stop was to see Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. Both are beautiful, but Lower Falls is more impressive just due to its size. It’s a little over a 300 foot waterfall, and is considered to be one of the most scenic waterfalls in the world. It drops the Yellowstone River into a huge canyon with bright colored rock walls that gave the park its name. It wasn’t raining there, thankfully, since it was a perfect picture spot.

            We returned through Lamar Valley and Hayden Valley, which are some of the top wildlife viewing spots in the park. We saw bison, elk, deer, moose, foxes, a coyote, and even a grizzly bear and a few wolves. It was a great trip back. As we drove by part of Yellowstone Lake (which is absolutely HUGE!!), I saw some cormorants playing in the water, and it reminded me of the cormorants that hang around the river by the zoo back home. They’re one of my favorite species of birds.

            I got back to the lodge just in time to meet Tanner and Cristina for dinner at the EDR. The weather’s a little rainy here tonight; I like the sound of the rain outside my back door here in the dorm. I have tomorrow off as well, and don’t have any plans so far. Tanner’s off as well, so maybe he and I will do something. I don’t expect to do anything big though.