Geysers and Bike Rides
Our second full day in Yellowstone National Park
Summer means travel for my family. It also means that between commentary on life, social issues, and our years living in Texas, I will deliver two to three posts a month about our family’s summer travels until the end of the year and into January.
The following post is too long for email. You will need to open the full blog post in your browser to read the whole post. You can read the previous post about our first day in Yellowstone here.
We had two goals for our second full day in Yellowstone: Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic.
And so day two was dedicated to chasing geysers.
After the pace of the previous day, we were ready to do a little less and enjoy the moments as they came to us. We paid close attention to the National Parks app and kept looking at the geyser timings to determine when we needed to be at Old Faithful so we could see at least one eruption. But Jeff wasn’t going to be happy with just one geyser. He had been paying close attention to the timing of multiple “predictable” geysers and he wanted to see as many as possible. He would spend the next two days hoping to see more.
While we had all agreed we were going to take it a little easier on our second day, I was still chasing some waterfalls, and persuaded the family to stop and take pictures of Kepler Cascades before we continued down the road.
When we arrived at the Old Faithful complex, we had just enough time to walk through the Old Faithful Inn, probably one of the only hotels in the world I desperately want to stay in someday. Our kids weren’t nearly as impressed as I hoped they would be, but I still fell back in love with the several-story high great room and fireplace.
Then we sat out in the sunshine to wait for Old Faithful to begin its eruption. While there are bigger geysers throughout the park, this one has earned its name because of its relative predictability and frequency. We listened to the park ranger speak about the science behind Yellowstone’s geysers as we waited for it to finally give us a show.
But we weren’t done in the Old Faithful region. The grounds are the base for the Upper Geyser Basin. After a quick picnic lunch, we hopped on our bikes and rode them down the paved trail past many more geysers and springs. We missed the eruption of Grand Geyser because it was going off while we were waiting for Old Faithful, but we still got to see plenty of hot spots as we rode from stop to stop, getting to each location much faster than if we had decided to go solely on foot. We still had to walk the trails to see several of the geysers and springs, but the bikes helped cut down on time. (There are a handful good and relatively easy places to bike in Yellowstone. I highly recommend taking them if you know you will be able to use them for quick sightseeing transportation. This map shows the geyser locations near Old Faithful.)
Our next stop was Biscuit Basin, where we walked on wooden boards across thermal springs that would kill us if we took a wrong step. The colors left behind by thermal deposits in the active springs and geysers were stunning.
A couple of weeks after we returned from Yellowstone, the boardwalk we had carefully traversed became damaged when one of the geysers exploded, showering visitors with rock, mud, and thermal water. While we were in the park, we repeatedly told our kids the park was constantly changing. When we showed them pictures of the explosion, we were able to show them we were right. They could return next year and that hike could be totally different.
Next, we needed to fulfill our son’s wish: the Grand Prismatic.
We parked at the Fairy Falls Trailhead parking lot and once again got out our bikes for the one-mile trek to the base of the 0.6-mile trail to the overlook. The views at the top were stunning. The Grand Prismatic is one of the more famous landmarks in Yellowstone, yet for some reason, Jeff and I did not make it a stop when we visited the park 20 years before. It was one of many regrets we had as we drove our kids around Yellowstone.
Then we headed another mile down the road to park alongside the road so we could hike around the gigantic spring. It is a completely different experience to see the Grand Prismatic up close, but still worth it.
This time, we got home to make dinner with plenty of daylight to spare. We had seen some of the most significant landmarks in the park but had not overdone it. I was able to walk the dogs and get them inside before I could be concerned about bears coming out for nighttime snacks. And we were ready to rest for another full day of exploring.
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