Upper Geyser Basin

Old Faithful, right before eruption.

One of my days off, a co-worker and I went to the park to see Old Faithful, and the rest of the Upper Geyser Basin. Old Faithful is the most famous of the geysers (it is very large and has pretty regular eruptions so its easy to see it go off) but there are tons of really cool geysers up in the basin around Old Faithful which were really cool to get to look at and experience their eruptions.

After seeing Old Faithful, we went up and walked around the Upper Geyser Basin. It's about a mile or so on a boardwalk from Old Faithful to the Morning Glory Pool, and it goes by countless geysers and pools that all erupt at different times in different ways. One of them is the beehive geyser.

This is the Beehive Geyser, before an eruption.

The beehive geyser is really neat because the eruptions it has are sporadic, but incredibly powerful. Its one of the geysers that has sort of a cult following. When we went by there was a ranger sitting by it, watching the indicators to see when it was going to go off, along with 5 or 6 people there with books and blankets, obviously having been there awhile, and were waiting for it to go off. We ended up getting to see the eruption from far away, but it was still impressive.

The Beehive Geyser erupting. It was really cool because Old Faithful started erupting right after it.

Beehive on the left and Old Faithful on the right, erupting at the same time.

Morning Glory Pool. It used to look like a morning glory flower but people keep throwing trash in it which makes it change color and plugs the vents in the bottom.

Some of the geysers are completely random (like Beehive) but some are predictable like Old Faithful. Some go off a few times a day, some a few times a month, and some a few times an hour. My favorite geyser in the basin is Anemone Geyser, which is actually 2 small geysers in one, and goes through its entire cycle of filling its pools, erupting, and draining, every 10 minutes or so.

Anemone Geyser, after draining