Old Faithful

Some days just don’t turn out the way that you expect.  Today was one of those days.  It was a day full of wonderful surprises!

Yesterday, I got to indulge in my passion, painting. I was able to paint for most of the day.  I am working on a landscape painting of Oxbow Bend.  Today, David got to indulge in his passion, photography.

We got up very early this morning because David wanted to go back to Oxbow Bend and take some more photos.  He wanted to be there when the morning sun first kissed the Tetons.  The Tetons turned purple as the sun hit them.  It was a heavenly sight.

Since we were up so early, we decided to go to the northern part of Jackson Lake to take some more photos of the Tetons from a different vantage point.  As we were driving there, on a whim, we decided to drive on to Yellowstone National Park.  We knew that we would arrive early enough to beat the crowds so we headed to Old Faithful.

Yellowstone was our first national park and was established March 1, 1872.  The Park covers 3471 sq. miles and is the eighth largest national park.  Each section of the park has many unique features from geyser basins, pristine lakes, paint pots, mud pots, fumaroles, canyons, valleys, hot springs, and much more. A few of our favorites are: the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone that has some fabulous waterfalls, the Lamar Valley where you can see herds of bison, and Yellowstone Lake which is the largest high elevation lake in North America. Although, there are many interesting things to see and do in Yellowstone, we settled on going to the Old Faithful area which has the largest concentration of active geysers and hot springs.

On our drive through the park, we saw another bison along the road and a white tailed deer and it baby fawn.

We arrived at Old Faithful about 8:30 AM and the next eruption of the geyser was in about an hour. The weather was warm and the sky was a beautiful azure blue color.  It was a great day to watch the geysers and see the hot springs.  We poked around some of the shops until it was time to gather around Old Faithful.  There were lots of people there but not as many as there would be later in the day.

It was a magnificent geyser display lasting more than 4 minutes.

We waited a bit for the crowd to disperse and then made our way to some more shops and to the Visitor Center.  I have been looking for a hat to help protect me from UV rays and have not been able to find one in Grand Teton.  I was able to find one and I’m sure that I’ve made my dermatologist very happy! Now, David and I will both be sporting matching stylish lids.

After lunch at the Old Faithful Inn, we walked around the volcanic basin and enjoyed seeing some more of the beautifully colored hot springs and geysers.  It was a wonderful afternoon. Here are some photos:

Lobby of famous Old Faithful Inn

Here’s a tip: When you come to Yellowstone or Grand Tetons, bring a water bottle.  There are free water filling stations so you don’t have to buy bottled water. The water is filtered and is very safe. Save your money so that you can have some huckleberry ice cream.  We highly recommend it and, I must say, we did treat ourselves to some today.  It was delicious!

On our way back to Grand Tetons NP, we stopped at Kepler Cascades, another one of the many amazing places in this park.

We drove back to our camper after having poured our day full of adventure.  It was not what we had planned or expected to do today, but it turned out to be a wonderful experience.