We got up super early to beat the Yellowstone traffic to check out the bubbling geysers and hot springs. It was other wordly, walking among steaming aqua pools bubbling away next to the white earth.

A geyser is essentially a thermal pool, with a more complicated plumbing system that causes violent boiling and water to spew out (I think). Yellowstone has the largest collection of geysers in the world, the most famous of which is Old Faithful, erupting every hour and a half or so.

Old Faithful had last erupted about 50 minutes before we arrived, so we had some time to check out the smaller geysers and pools nearby.

If you want an authentic Yellowstone experience, go find some rotten eggs to smell as you scroll through these photos. The warm sulphuric smell was so intense. And gross.

We took prime position just before 9am and waited patiently:

After a few small goes, Old Faithful blasted water upwards in an impressively powerful fashion:

After it died down we continued to walk around the stinky pools and geysers.

“Why do you smell so bad?”

The variety of pools and geysers was pretty interesting, from the colours to the sizes and shapes and muddiness.

I think this is my favourite

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A cone geyser

Pretty crazy to think we are just wandering around atop a super volcano. We drove on to find more traffic geysers and hot springs in the Lower Geyser Basin. The most impressive of which was the Grand Prismatic Spring:

Those colours

Photos don’t do it justice

I can’t remember what this one is called

After tiring slightly of the crowds and truly nuts driving we drove through other areas of the park, including where wildlife is commonly spotted.

Can you spot the uncomfortably close grizzly bear?

It’s the brown lump right in the middle

We kept driving to the calm shores of Yellowstone Lake. We were the only two down there, bliss.

We stopped in at the Lake Lodge to put up our feet by the fire and hook into some wifi.

Have promised myself I will go back there to stay one day.

Later in the evening we headed to Hayden Valley to do some more wildlife spotting.

Cool bus

We sidled up to people who had been set up there all day with telescopes and learnt that two grizzly bears had killed an elk, dragged it to the edge of the lake and buried its carcass. Now, there was a wolf trying to steal some dinner for itself.

We watched (from very far away I should add) as the wolf darted daringly to snap at where the carcass was while the grizzly got increasingly irate and eventually charged at the wolf. Pretty cool!

Watching nature happen

We weren’t the only ones stopping to have a look:

The sun then set on what was a fantastic day.

More tomorrow!