The day we arrived, we knew we needed to change our plans. Ride 4 hours, do stars at night, do an 8-hour photography tour the next day, the next day do another long ride to leave. Too much, too fast, and too much time in a bombardier. So after dinner the first night, we extended our visit by one day. So today is our "bonus" day. 24 hours of not being in a bomb and time to soak it all in. I started my day with a Belgian hot chocolate, made with cream, butter, and Belgian chocolate. Oh my, oh my!! Oh, there was a yummy breakfast that went with it.
Our photography friends said their plan for today was to take "The Geysers and Geezers Tour." So we decided to do that, too. We walked the 2+ mile loop through the Upper Geyser Basin to Morning Glory Pool.
Giant Geyser is currently pretty inactive (last eruption January 2005), but when it blows, it's giant! 200-250 feet, expelling over a million gallons of water over a 1 to 1.5 hour period. I was fascinated with the fact that the "large sinter shroud surrounding Giant Geyser's vent may be an indication of the geyser's great age. The slow accumulation of mineral (1 to 2 inches every 100 years) indicates that Giant could be thousands of years old."
Morning Glory pool, which isn't as glorious as it once was. Humans throw things into the pool which change the thermal dynamics and cause the water temperature to drop, which changes which organisms can live in the pool and where and it's the organisms that give the pools their color. It's still pretty amazing.
Riverside Geyser erupted for about 15 minutes while we were there. And guess who else was there... the Geezers! We walked the rest of the trail back to Old Faithful with them. It was a delightful end to our walk.
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