Yellowstone National Park: thermal wonders

Boardwalk trails

 

A walk among thermal wonders…water bubbles and hisses, bacteria creates otherworldly colors, hot water trickles, the ground holes with puffs of steam. 

Amazing landscape. Fumaroles, hot springs, geysers, mudpots, vast areas of surreal color and shape.

Yellowstone National Park: delight of geysers

 Even more exciting was stumbling upon a geyser eruption!

This was Beehive Geyser, we were drenched, walking to the Old Faithful Inn to have lunch and suddenly hundreds of thousands of litres of hit water spewing into the air!

Beehive Geyser,

Later in the afternoon driving along Firelake Drive we were waiting for a potential eruption and in the background of the photo below is White Dome, a conical geyser. We decided to walk towards the feature to photograph its volcano like shape when it erupted. No words but 'woohoo'.

White Dome Geyser erupting, that's Shawni in the foreground

Late afternoon light frustrating the photographers, but what a sight.

The White Dome Geyser, gently puffing after its eruption.

Yellowstone National Park; meeting Old Faithful

Yellowstone National Park. 

When I was planning our USA adventure Yellowstone was one of the cornerstones of the trip and here we are.  The day arrived overcast, rain, cold, grey but I felt like waking up on a Christmas morning - anticipation! 

Mid July is peak season, the park feels like Sandton City on a saturday morning month end, nose to tail traffic, parking lots overflowing with buses, RV's and cars, traffic jams at a wild life sighting and lines of people.

Old Faithful was the first stop and despite the people and the weather what a thrill. The wait, watching the ever changing steam, then the first signs of the boiling water and at last the whoosh of the geyser. 

What a thrill and we got to do it twice.

View of the geyser mount from the Observation Point half a mile away

The thousands of people on the boardwalk seating waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

Old Faithful Geyser