Geysers are cool!

Today was all about exploring Yellowstone's many and varied geothermal features.  So we got up before sunrise, and, on the way to Old Faithful, got treated to a beautiful sunrise and moonset at the same time!  We also got to see the surrounding mountains turn pink, and the mist from the many geothermal vents light up.  It was well worth the early rise.







Besides, the park is very crowded (surprisingly so, since this is the "shoulder" season.  Many "seniors (like us....) and may tourists from everywhere - heard a lot of French and German today, although, by far the most numerous tourists from overseas are from China:

At the lodge, the signs to the restaurants and cafeterias look like this......
We arrived in the Old Faithful area shortly after 8am and, although it was not empty (these are people waiting for Old Faithful to do it's thing), it was not crowded either.  Our timing was perfect:  we arrived within a few minutes of it's schedule eruption, and indeed, it was right on time! Aand quite a sight!  In fact, we got to see it a second time (it goes off about every 90 minutes), 
Me from the overlook which gives a completely different view, and Joe from the other side.
 Right after the overlook, I startled a doe and her fawn, but carefully moved away so as to not bother them...











I then got to the well named "Solitaire" Geyser:  first, it is remote from the main geyser area, but also, because it requires a steep climb, there is no one up there.  It goes off every 4 to 7 minutes, so I waited there, and had the show all to myself!

We lucked out geyser-wise:  as we were studying the map in the visitor center, they announced that the "Beehive" Geyser was showing signs that it was going to erupt within 5 or 10 minutes, so we rushed there and got quite a show!  The sun's direction was such that the geyser was flying the rainbow flag...... (that's the picture at the top of the blog).
The visitor center has the times for all of the geysers that are predictable (most aren't), so you could spend all day going from one to the other.....  We saw Old Faithful, Beehive, Daisy and multiple smaller ones too.


Then we moved on to the different type of geothermal areas nearby:  There are beautiful and deep blue pools, bubbling mud holes that bubble all the time (I love those!), and amazingly varied colored terraces:  the blue comes from sulfites in the water (they absorb every color but blue), the other colors are thermophile bacteria which grow in large colonies in the hot, sulfur rich water (nature is amazing!).




There are geysers of every size and every behavior:  Small ones that go on all the time, large ones that are predictable, large ones that erupt every hour, some every century, some completely unpredictably. There are pools of every color and depth, and these delightful mud pools that bubble all the time. Here are a few examples: we took SOOOOO many pictures, it's hard to pick a representative set.

  It's too bad that such signs are necessary, but I guess when over 4 millions visitors come every year, it's inevitable that a few will be idiots......












A lot of the large pool areas, where the water level varies with thermal activity have trees that started to grow, and stand as a dead forest, killed by the heat and the minerals when the thermal water oeverflows.





















And then, among all of these geothermal feature, there is nature: beautiful streams and meadows, bison roaming everywhere, ospreys by the streams where people are fly fishing, and large ravens...
What a place!

 We had a nice lunch by such a little stream, away from the smell of sulfur, just before an afternoon rain that lasted about one hour, but did not impact any of our plans.