Geysers, Springs, and Waterfalls
Our third 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 second day in Yellowstone here.
On our third day in Yellowstone, we made a careful list of the last “must-dos” for individual family members. While we hadn’t taken any intentional hikes, we still had done a lot of walking on the trails around the park. I still wanted to go on one of the many hikes in Yellowstone, but the cool temperatures that welcomed us to the park had been heating up every day. The rest of my family wasn’t so keen on a long hike into the wilderness, even though we had rented bear spray for that very purpose.
Our son wanted to stop at Canyon Village one more time because he wanted to buy a souvenir knife and he liked one he had seen there. When we arrived, the visitor center was finally reopened, so we checked out the fantastic displays showing the geologic history of the park and the science behind all of the volcanic activity we had experienced for the past two and a half days. We also kept a close eye on the geyser eruption times because Jeff wanted to end his day watching more geysers.
We traveled to the Norris Geyser Basin, finding a parking spot along the road to join the hundreds of visitors who were also making their mid-day stop at the basin. (There is a parking lot, but it is small and fills up quickly.) During our stop at the gift shop, we discovered the Yellowstone Forever membership which helps to support the park and gives visitors a discount. With several more purchases to make before we headed home, we bought the memberships, kicking ourselves for not having gotten it earlier. (In our defense, the older gentleman cashier was the first to offer it to us. If you ever go to the region, make sure to check on the membership before you buy anything.)
Then we hiked the Porcelain Basin, the shorter of the trails in Norris. The 1.6-mile loop took us past more blue and turquoise springs as well as some springs that have dried up as the geysers have moved.
Then we walked down the trail to the Back Basin. We had no intention of doing the full trail, but we wanted to check out Steamboat Geyser and made a stop at Emerald Spring along the way. Steamboat Geyser was throwing up so much steam we thought we would get lucky enough to see a major eruption, which can throw water as high as 300 feet in the air, but we just got to witness a lot of steam and some bubbling. When we were in the park, the most recent eruption had been May 30. We missed the next eruption by nearly a week.
Despite our desire to do as much as possible, we skipped the Artists Paintpots. The trail was only a mile, but we still needed to make it back to the Upper Geyser Basin to catch another eruption.
Instead, we continued down the loop, stopping at Gibbon Falls and then taking the one-way Firehole Canyon Drive off the main road. We discovered fellow park visitors fishing and swimming in the Firehole River, convincing us to pull over the side of the road and take off our own shoes to step into the rocky river. The water was perfect: clear, cool but not cold, and refreshing under the hot sun. My only regret was we didn’t know to have our bathing suits along.
Before exiting the drive, we stopped to take pictures of Firehole Falls, a picturesque bookend to a surprise drive we had not put onto our itinerary.
It had been a good day, but as evening approached we were tired, hungry, and we still wanted to see Grand Geyser. According to the app, we were in the eruption window, but by the time we arrived, it was over. All we witnessed was the last spitting gasps of the most recent eruption. Instead, we got to witness Castle Geyser in all its glory.
It was time to go home. We were hungry and fighting over where we should eat. We were about an hour from home and the dogs still needed to be let out. With a handful of snacks, we got home and I made as quick of a dinner as possible.
Now I just had to convince Jeff to take a short road trip south to the Grand Tetons.
Get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:
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