The faithful crowds

Today we drove up into Yellowstone as a day trip, about 30 miles from Lewis Lake campground, to see the Old Faithful geyser area.

First we took a really nice bike ride to the Lone Star geyser. The trail is hike or bike 2.5 miles from the road. It was a real easy ride, not very crowded, and we were glad to not be walking it. It was about noon and getting hot. It erupts every 3 hours and we happened to catch near the beginning of it.

Starting out....

about 10 minutes along....    the spray is real cold when the wind blows it toward the trail.

just about done, after 15-20 minutes.

The name comes from the fact that it is off by itself, separate from the other geysers.

Next we went to the main Old Faithful area, to have a picnic and wait for it go off.
I guess I'm not surprised with school being out, but still I'm impressed, there are tons of people here.

The parking lot was full, and people were waiting to park. I said to Alice, while taking this picture, "what a zoo”. Elliot and Annie walked up a minute later, having been stuck in traffic trying to walk through the parking lot, and Elliot says "what a zoo..." This is the opposite of Annie and Alice's take on the crowds, Annie's quote was "this is like Disney".

Here and our last stop at Grand Tetons was similar, we got one of the last available sites, pulling in before 11am. So arrive early, or plan to drive all day out through the other side of the park. OK, enough grousing about all these tourists just like myself, I guess I got addicted to the off season.

Old Faithful was nice, sure makes a lot of noise.   I didn't think it was possible to get a shot with no people in it, as if I'm the first person to be witnessing Old Faithful.

ready....

get set....

go!!!!

Where's Waldo?

It was funny how the crowds also appear gradually, building and building.  Then evaporate every 90 minutes, charging for the 40 acre parking lot.

Alice and Annie did a ranger led watercolor painting activity, while Elliot and I got the bikes out and looked around the visitor center. The nice part of this area is that bikes are allowed on the main path from Old Faithful through a whole lot of other springs and geysers, up to the Biscuit basin. Seeing all these on foot would be exhausting.  These are really beautiful.