Yellowstone Day 2: The journey to Old Faithful

Waking in Mammoth Hot Springs the snow lay heavy on the ground but thankfully the road to Old Faithful was open. We started out carefully and before long we were engulfed in mist and light snow. Thankfully the mist cleared but it was still bit overcast as we journeyed deeper into ~~Narnia~~ Yellowstone.

Thankfully there was no wind which helped keep it bearable out of the car. Indeed we could even get by without gloves. The still conditions meant the trees were laden with snow and the lakes were as still as glass making for some amazing views.

As we got further into the park we started seeing more thermal areas (apart from Mammoth most of the thermal sites are clustered further south in the park in and around the caldera of the Yellowstone supervolcano). The biggest area of thermal activity was around the famous Steamboat geyser. Steamboat is the worlds tallest geyser and is currently in phase where it's erupting unusually frequently (once every seven to ten days on average). We decided to return in one or two days which was when the experts forecast was the most likely time for the next eruption.

We reached Old Faithful village just in time for lunch. After a relaxed lunch at Old Faithful Lodge we trooped out to see the eruption of the famous geyser. Eruptions of Old Faithful are highly predicable. For my fellow statisticians the interval between eruptions is bimodal with a mean time of 65 or 90 minutes depending on the duration of the previous eruption (the SD is something like 5 minutes).

By now the weather was much better than in the early morning so rather than wait to check in to our cabin we headed back out to see the Grand Prismatic Spring alongside the aptly named Firehole river. The shallow terraced patterns were very intricate with the sun doing its bit to enhance the experience even more.

Back at Old Faithful our very comfortable cabin was ready.

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