Yellowstone Part 1 -- Thermal Features out the wazoo!

I'm Wow, the drive to Yellowstone from Coeur d'Alene was pretty rough.  It's easy to forget when you're mapping things out on the internet that travel times are based on cars that actually go the speed limit. Oops.  What was planned as a 8 hour day was actually 11.  We also lost an hour so that made it 12. Setting up in the dark isn't too bad for us though, but it was chilly.

The drive had a few highlights. Butte Montana's 90 ft statue called Our Lady of the Rockies looking down from the edge of a nearby mountain looked incredible even from a distance.  It is Montana's version of Christ the Redeemer. The Clark Fork River was winding along and under I90 for a long time.  It struck me as flowing the wrong direction, but I have yet to confirm this.  We crossed the continental divide for the first time on the trip.  We'd cross it several more times in and around Yellowstone.

We took our time on the first day getting out of camp.  We did not set an alarm and Faith made an awesome breakfast.  Being a weekday, we decided to make this day Old Faithful Day and avoid the weekend crowds.  If you've ever been to Yellowstone, you know that it is BIG.  The roads are arranged in a figure 8 with our campsite being located on the right side of the midsection.  Each junction is 16-25 miles apart and major attractions can be up to 50.

We started at Norris Geyser Basin.  This is an area about a 1/4th the size of the Old Faithful area, but actually is home to the largest Geyser in the Park called Steamboat Geyser.  Unfortunately, it is very unpredictable and we did not yet have our good geyser luck.

Next up was Gibbon Falls.  The photo speaks for itself.

After Gibbon we did a one-way road to Firehole Falls.

We continued making our way to Old Faithful and there are many poholes, springs, pools, and geysers along the way.  A couple of highlights were Grand Prismatic Spring.  One entertaining thing about these geyser basins is that they have built up boardwalks all over the place.  I'm certain there are more linear feet of boardwalks in Yellowstone than the rest of the world.  Well it was windy, and people wear hats.  Sometimes those people are so in awe of the beauty before them that they forget that hats and wind don't mix.  At Grand Prismatic, there were probably 10 hats that had been lost.  I was entertained.  I was going to say they were all Seahawks and SF Giants hats, but I realize that tragic hat loss can even happen to people with good taste.  A couple pictures from this area:

If you go to Yellowstone make sure you check out Fountain Paint Pot and Firehole lake drive.

Finally we made it to Old Faithful and our Geyser luck started.  Old Faithful was due to blow any minute so we high-tailed it to the viewing area.  She popped about 2 minutes after we arrived.  I now understand the big deal.  The area around Old Faithful has many more geysers and spings.  Several of them erupt pretty regularly.  We were luck enough to be there for the eruption of Castle, Sawmill, and Tardy Geysers.  Castle was the most impressive of the 3 and only erupts every 14 hours, shoots water up to 75 feet and then steams for around an hour.  We could have spent a lot more time hiking around the Old Faithful area, but now we have something to do next time.  Grand Geyser, Lion Geyser, and Beehive Geyser all seem like they'd be great to see.

On the 50+ mile drive back to the camp we crossed the continental divide 2 more times.  There are 2 lakes up there on either side.  One lake drains in to the Snake River which ultimately joins the Columbia, and the other drains to the Yellowstone River which heads east and north to the Missouri.  I found this really cool.