Phot-o' the Day: Grotto Geyser; Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming USA

Yellowstone in artsy black and white.

Grotto Geyser was particularly steamy at the time. This is in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, near the most famous geyser in the history of geyser-dom, Old Faithful.

Visited September 2019. Y'know, if everything is still in lockdown this fall, and international travel is out of the question, and Hawaii (which I only want to visit so I will have been to all 50 of the states of the USA) is still doing the eternal-quarantine thing, so I'm only left with Mainland USA travel options, a return trip to Yellowstone probably would be my choice. It took me 59 years to finally get here and I have no excuse for what took me so long. It is unlike anyplace on planet earth.

Until the super-volcano underneath it all blows.

Final Two Stops in Yellowstone

Beryl Spring. Yet another really awesome attraction that I only knew about by driving past it.

The final stop of the Yellowstone visit was supposed to be Artist's Paint Pots.  But, again, major traffic back-up in the parking lot.  The Geyser Basin area in the southwestern part of the Figure 8 seems to get a whole lot more traffic than the rest of the park.  So I decided to skip it.

But, as I was driving along, this caught my eye.

Beryl Spring.  It certainly was letting off a lot of steam.

It was named for the fact that, at certain times of the year, when the sun is at the correct angle in the sky, the color of the pool is the blue-green of the beryl gemstone.

Even if it is not the right time of the year, it was worth turning the car around to take a look-see.

Yellowstone is full of places like this.  They're not prominent in any guidebooks, yet they grab your eye when you are driving by and you immediately do a U-turn to check out the place.  This is why the automobile will always be the best way to see America's national parks.

And befitting that theme is the final stop on my Yellowstone tour:

Gibbon Falls.  Yet another place I only learned about by driving past it.

Gibbon Falls is so named because this is the Gibbon River and there is a waterfall:

Gibbon Falls in all its glory.

And that concludes my visit to Yellowstone.

Another item crossed off my "Before They Cut My Feet Off" list.

Driving the Figure 8: Mammoth Hot Springs

Taking pictures (at least they're not selfies) at the Jupiter Terrace

The final major intended stop on the Figure 8 drive around Yellowstone National Park is Mammoth Hot Springs.

You drive into the Mammoth Hot Springs area and it looks like normal.  Like a small town in Middle America.

This is the old Fort Yellowstone area.  These buildings, since repurposed into a Visitors Center and the like, were the core of the old fort.

This area sits well outside the caldera, which accounts for the normal look.  In fact, Mammoth Hot Springs is the only major attraction within Yellowstone outside the caldera.  (And if you correct me and say that such-and-such is outside the caldera, too, then my comeback will be "yes, but it is not a major attraction."  This argument will work with pretty much every sight to see within Yellowstone but for Old Faithful.  And that one is most definitely within the caldera.)

Elk break:

Elks grazing in the downtown.  I saw a bear and about 150 tons of bison on the driving loop.  The bison were too far off in the distance (at that time) to be worthy of a picture without a telescopic lens.  The bear was close enough, but I was not interested interested in becoming shredded bear food while I tried to snap the bears picture.

Anyway, Mammoth Hot Springs has a normal area.  But it also has this:

Liberty Cap, a geyser that became dormant, but not before it left this nifty cone in shape of a cap.  It may be dormant now, but like all these geysers, one decent earthquake and the living geysers shut down and the dead ones come back to life.

First stop:  Jupiter Terrace.

Is the better picture with or without?  People that is.

Moving along to Minerva Terrace:

Two views of the same terrace?  I believe this is made of travertine.  Very upscale.

Crowds were light here on the north part of the loop.

Moving along the trail:

Water.  But don't drink.  All the water in the geyser areas is either scalding or poisonous or both.

Climbing higher on the trail:

This another feature.  It has a name.  Mound Terrace?

This is most definitely Mound Spring:

Yes, I cheated by taking a picture of the name plate:

That's a much easier way to remember these names.

Finally, I reached the summit of the trail and could look down on all the lands before me.

You can see the normal and the weird in this one picture.

Time to get back on the loop and start heading for the hotel, which would make for an almost complete Figure 8.  At the Norris ranger station, I saw a grazing buffalo.

There was a river separating us, likely the Gibbon River, so I felt comfortable getting as close as I did.

I supped at the Canyon Village diner.  I feasted on elk sausage.

Washed down with some huckleberry enhanced water, which is quite huckleberry.  The elk was delicious in sausage form.

More buffalo!

Or bison, if you prefer.

And with that, my long one full day in Yellowstone National Park comes to its conclusion.

Driving the Figure 8: the Lake, LeHardy's Rapids

LeHardy's Rapids along the Yellowstone

One of the problems with Yellowstone is that there are so many extremely spectacular sights that are completely unlike anything else you've seen on earth, that a lot of the absolutely beautiful sights get lost.

(Poor Grand Teton National Park has this problem.  It's beautiful.  It's amazing.  But it's right next door to Yellowstone so the overall impression is a relative "eh."  Put it almost anywhere else in the Lower 48 and it would breath-taking.  It's like a concert performer having to take the stage right after James Brown or Graham Parker in their prime.  How do you top that?  It's a whole lot easier to follow Blondie or A Flock of Seagulls.)

But first, Lake Yellowstone, which is right outside the front door of my hotel.

It's enormous.

The water is supposed to so cold that if you even dip a toe in, you freeze solid.  I think I used that line before.  I'm old.  Repetition happens.  Repeatedly.

The Lake Village area is kind of small, with one giant hotel, a general store, and a medical clinic (perfect for us old people in danger of having our feet chopped off).  And this.

It appears to be an abandoned gas station.

My car is getting outrageously good mileage at the high elevation, so there's no need to fuel up for the drive around the Figure 8.  All of the sights you want to see in Yellowstone, for the most part, are along two circular loops that touch, forming basically a Figure 8  Lake Village would be the southeast corner of the Figure 8.  So we head north to the Mud Volcano and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The problem is that you can't just drive from place to place.  You'll be toddling along and see something you didn't know was worth seeing and you immediately make a hard right turn into the parking area. 

First stop:  A brief walk through the trees and then to LeHardy's Rapids.

This is the Yellowstone River, having come from the lake and, at this point, heading north.

And here be rapids:

It's no Mud Volcano, I know, but it is beautiful.

I liked this place so much that, at the end of the day, when on the same segment of the Figure 8 heading south back to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, I stopped again:

Even more spectacular with the evening light.  I saw a duck going through the rapids:

He's a tiny spec so you can't make him out.  But seeing him shoot through the rapids was hilarious fun.  Laugh out loud, as the kids would say.  I hope the duck enjoyed it.  I did.

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.