Another Item Crossed Off My "Before They Chop My Feet Off" List

Old Faithful. It's what everybody who is here is here for.

I've arrived at my destination:

Yellowstone National Park.  Another item crossed off my list.  I've never liked the term "bucket list."  It seemed too final.  Do everything on it and it's time to kick the bucket?  No.  Thank.  You.

I'm overweight and I need to get my blood sugar under control, because if I don't, I'll get diabetes, and you know what happens when you get diabetes?  They chop your feet off.  So before they chop my feet off, there's a whole lot of world to see.  Yellowstone is particularly weird part of it.

So I'm getting to see Yellowstone before they chop my feet off.  I entered Yellowstone from the south and the scenery was immediately spectacular.

Pictures do not do the scenery justice.  And scenery such as the above is going to look ho-hum and pedestrian when you've got mud volcanoes and more fumaroles than you can shake a dozen-dozen sticks at.  And geysers.  The place is lousy with geysers.

Take Kepler Cascades.

It's a perfectly nice little cataract set within beautiful forest.

And no one knows about because it doesn't spurt 100 feet in the air at regular intervals.  Speaking of which ...

My first destination for one of the mega-star attractions of Yellowstone is Old Faithful.  They even announce (in multiple locations!) the scheduled time for the next spurt.

I got there about an hour before the next schedule eruption.  So let's check out the visitor center:

The Visitor Center even has a viewing area, so you can view the regularly-scheduled eruptions protected from the elements.

And there was time to check out the Old Faithful Inn:

This is one of the two historic old railroad robber-baron era "luxury" hotels built for guests at Yellowstone.  Does the interior look vaguely familiar?

Disney copied the look in large part for the national park-themed Wilderness Lodge hotel in the DisneyWorld in Orlando.

Time's up.  Old Faithful is ready to blow:

He was a little late.  Old Faithful is scheduled to erupt every 90 minutes.  He was five minutes late.  And when Old Faithful blows, what does the crowd do?

Takes pictures!  No one just watches the eruption.  What fun is that?  Pictures or it didn't happen, as the kids would say.

And Old Faithful just kept spouting for several minutes.

And everybody is still taking pictures:

OK.  Me included.

The show ended after several minutes.  Next show in 90 minutes, give or take 10 minutes as the sign did say.  The crowd dispersed.  As did the water that Old Faithful shot into the air.

It had to go somewhere.  This is the part of the park called "Upper Geyser Basin,"  It is named for the fact that it is a basin that has geysers, and it's above both Lower Geyser Basin and Midway Geyser Basin.

Let's take a walking tour of Upper Geyser Basin.  On the next episode of "Crossing Things Off My Before They Chop My Feet Off" list.