 Before
we went on our hike, we stopped at the Biscuit Basin. Right between
the parking lot and the road, sort of on the right hand side of the drive
leading into the parking lot, is Rusty Geyser. The rocks of the crater
are stained red, presumably with rust. Rusty isn't very big, but
he is very frequent and reliable and just right there where we were going
anyway, so we visited him. |
 Here
we have a bison hanging out by the appropriately named Island Geyser.
I's sort of the ultimate Yelowstone picture in a way with the bison, the
geyser, the river, the dead trees. All we need now is a wolf and
tourists with cameras trying to pet the wildlife. |
 We
walked to see Baby Daisy Geyser. This was the third "new" thermal
feature I wanted to see this trip. Baby Daisy had erupted in the
1950's, but been mostly dormant until the winter previous to our trip.
Although smaller (about 30 feet) is does resemble Daisy
Geyser with it being angled and all. It is in what is called
the Old Road portion of the Biscuit Basin. The highway used to run
right through the Upper Basin. They tore up the pavement when I was
a kid, but you can still walk down the old road bed from Biscuit Basin
to Morning Glory Pool along the old road bed. We kind of lucked out
with the timing, the geyser erupted within minutes of us arriving.
Some people had been waiting much longer and were getting concerned that
Baby Daisy was being slower than expected. It was just waiting on
us to get there.
I hadn't noticed it until I was resizeing the picture for the web page, but there are some dark spots in Baby Daisy. At first I thought I just had dirt on my camera lens, but those spots aren't in the previous picture or in the next picture, so now I think that just maybe Baby Daisy was tossing the occasional rock or dirt clod into the air. |
 After
Baby Daisy we walked around the boardwalk at the more developed part of
Bisciut Basin. We say Jewel Geyser among others. Jewel kind
of reminds me of Plume, quick eruptions consisting of several Grand
style bursts. It does seem to make big water drops that catch the
sun like jewels. |
 We
drove to the parking area for our hike, the parking lot second south of
the main Midway Geyser basin lot, the one with the iron bridge. Right
across the street was Till Geyser in eruption. It's not the best
shot of Till. I didn't want to walk directly to it from the road,
and climbing any nearby hill looked time consuming and I didn't want to
delay the start of our adventure. Still, you can see that Till erupts
from a line of vents. I was happy to see even this as Till was one
of those geysers I had read about but never seen erupt before. I
took this happy accident to be a good sign for the hike. |
 So
we set off on our hike of on our hike, about a 3 1/2 miles walk each way.
After crossing the Firehole River by way of the iorn bridge we were on
what appeared to be an old road bed. If so it was one from before
my time. There was an unattractive string of electrical wires by
the trail, and occasionally you could see what looked like old phone lines
sticking out of the ground. It passed the main portion of the Midway
Geyser Basin on the side opposite of what modern car travelers are used
to seeing. You could see the steam clouds of the enormous Grand Prismatic
Spring quite well though. Grand Prismatic is Yellowstone's largest
single hot spring. Probably because of it's size the steam clouds
above it pick up the colors of the pool beneath them. So you get
blue and orange and pink steam as you can see from the picture. |
 If
you climb a bit farther up the hillside you can see the pool of Grand Prismatic.
Don't the people look like little ants there walking on the boardwalk on
the far side? |
|
The trail eventually leaves the old road and becomes a proper trail. The forest was severely burned up. It had a sort of stark beauty to it. Some places were thick with little trees, perfect for wild animals to hide in. Others were barren and dusty. I noticed that there were places where you could see that there was a black insulated cable of some sort buried under the trail. I nearly tripped on one section, that's probably why I noticed it. Now, there isn't anything on my maps out this way that is human made except the trail we were on, and it circles back after a few miles from where we hiked to. It's the proverbial trackless wilderness for miles and miles after that. So what was this buried cable doing there? I doubt a grizzly had cable TV installed in his den. I figured it had to be going to one of those secret underground bases the shadow government has all over the place, the one the more paranoid side of the web has so much to say about. (Hey, they couldn't print it if it wasn't true). What else could it be? I wish I had thought to take pictures of the cable for skeptics. But, I was trying to be conservative with my camera's memory card. None of the stores in the park had any of the right sort. Go get a metal detector and dig up the trail if you don't believe me about the secret cable. |
 It
seemed like we would never get to Fairy Falls. It kind of hides in
a little fold in the cliff, so you don't see it from the trail till you
are almost there. I didn't see any fairies, or any gray aliens from
the secret underground base for that matter. It was very cool if
you stood right at the base of the falls. The falling water created
quite a cold, moist down draft. Fairy is a tall waterfall, about
as tall as Beehive Geyser.
By this point we drank the last of our water. Only Jennifer had bought water along. I had left my water bottle in Florida, and mom carried nothing with her. It was frustrating looking at all that nice cool water and not being able to drink it because of Giardia and stuff. |
 We
hiked a short way further to Spray geyser. Spray surprised me, it
was much taller than I remembered it from a hike many years ago.
It must be 10 or 15 feet tall here by my highly accurate imagine I am standing
next to it method. Spray has two main vents, and several smaller
ones. It barely stopped while we were there. First one vent
would dominate, then it would die down to just minor sputtering, then the
other would start. We watched it for a while. We also refilled
the water bottle with near boiling geyser water from Spray's runoff channel.
We figured it was too hot for Giardia. Unfortunately it was too hot
to drink right away either. I kind of looked around the small streams
near there to see if I could locate any wild mint to make geyser water
tea with, but didn't see any. |
 Near
Spray is Imperial Geyser. It erupts from the edge of a big, pretty,
pale blue-green hot pool. Imperial has an interesting history.
It evidently started in the 1920's as a major (80 foot tall) geyser.
After a bit more than a year it quit. In the 1960's it started again,
only to 40 foot at first but constant. A few years later it was up
to 70 feet tall, and was having short pauses between short eruptions.
Then around 1985 it went dormant again. Now it has started back up,
I would guess to around 20 feet. While we were there it did not stop.
We weren't there very long. Notice the sky had suddenly started to
look a bit ominous, and we were 3 1/2 miles from the car. Mom thought
it would be a good idea to leave quickly. I was the only one prepared
for rain. I has stashed several plastic garbage bags in my pack for
use as rain ponchos and book protectors. |
 So
mom took off down the trail ahead of me and my sister. She did get
to the car quicker than we did, but forgot that she didn't have the car
keys with her, so it didn't do her much good. My sister and I poked
along looking at stuff, adjusting our day packs to protect the books and
cameras from water, putting on our garbage bag garb, and drinking hot water.
We figured we were going to get soaked anyway. I thought this
stump was kind of interesting, how the inside was totally burned up, but
the outside was untouched by the fire. Actually a lot of the dead
trees were all silvery and uncharred looking. I guess maybe the bark
on the trunks got charred and has since fallen off, leaving the silvery
unburned wood exposed. |
 The
sky got real scary for a while. It looked kind of like tornado weather,
but I don't think tornadoes are common in Yellowstone. I was worried
more about hail as there wasn't much of any place along the trail to shelter
from hail. Fortunately we only got a few small chunks of ice hitting
us. There was some rain, and lots of wind. We saw several of
the dead trees crash to the ground. It was pretty exciting.
After a little while the sky got several shades lighter, the wind died
down and a cold slow rain set in. We passed two hippie boys hiking
toward the falls in their tie dye t shirts and shorts, no rain gear or
anything. What were they smoking? |
 We
named this small trail side hot spring Buffalo Poop Pool for obvious reasons. |
 This
stick of wood by the trail looked weird. I have seen less extreme
cases of this on the wood of the boardwalks in the geyser basins.
The wood turns into a sort of brittle fuzz, something like fiber glass.
I always thought it had something to do with exposure to the water of hot
springs and geysers, but this log, while in a thermal area, didn't
seem to be exposed to any spring water directly. Maybe the steam
in the winter does it. Who knows. |
 We
made it back to the car safely. We cranked the heater and drove back
to the Snow Lodge. I went for an afternoon stroll through the Upper
Basin. I only got rained on a little, and I did get to see this rainbow
right around sunset. |