My second day of Jackson we decided to drive through Grand Teton National Park and up to Yellowstone. Yellowstone is pretty vast, so we decided to go to infamous Old Faithful and keep our exploring to that part of the park. The drive up was gorgeous. We couldn’t have asked for a better day. It was all sunshine, blue skies, and lovely drives.
Look wildlife!
Even more wildlife! [Please try to ignore the windshield wipers and air freshener. Animals do not wait for you to get out of your car so you can have a photo op.] Anytime there was more than two people pulled over to the side of the road everyone would just pull over in hopes they were watching some animal. And usually they were. I made one minivan full of foreign tourists very happy by pointing out some elk, haha.
Trying out the panoramic mode on my camera.
As we kept driving there were piles of yet to be melted snow stacked up on the sides of the road and still thawing lakes that stretched out into oblivion. The pictures don’t do it justice at all. The first time we spotted this out the window we were in total awe.
We somehow had magical timing at Old Faithful and got there about ten minutes before it went off. One of the best parts of the Old Faithful experience was the anticipation around us. There was a huge group of people gathered around waiting for the big moment and the kids were especially freaking out.
Check out these crowds of anxious people. They wrapped all the way around the geyser viewing area. P.S. Sorry family who was right in front of my crowd shot. I hope this isn’t weird to have a random close up of their profiles!
Any time a puff of steam would come out everyone would freak out and start arranging their cameras only to have to wait 5 more minutes. But thankfully there were only a few false alarms and then Old Faithful erupted, just as expected [true to it’s name].
The first (or last) bit of the show. I’m a bit fuzzy on photo order.
And there it goes!
Old Faithful in all it’s glory.
The aftermath.
After Old Faithful erupted we hiked around the area and saw some more geysers and hot pools [Is that what you call them?]. There were other great hikes not too far away. Most of them had boardwalks over the area because the ground is thin and there is those hot pools everywhere. We saw some other geysers that were smaller than Old Faithful, but still fun to watch. After they were done going off they created these great looking steam clouds.
They call this one the Castle Geyser. We didn’t see it erupt but it had one of the coolest rock formations surrounding it.
We were able to get a lot closer to this geyser than Old Faithful. There were a few points were I was convinced I was going to get splashed, haha.
Steam clouds!
We couldn’t have magical timing for every single geyser. Some we just had to settle for observing like this. Still great scenery though.
Buy my favorite part was the hot pools/ sulfur pots [Again, whatever you want to call them]. In fact I think my favorite thing deserves it’s own post, don’t you? Stay tuned.
Currently: surprised by how much I liked Edge of Tomorrow. Very entertaining! I highly recommend it for your summer blockbuster fix.
Bedelia 