We woke in the morning frozen solid. This was after waking up several times in the night freezing, trying to restart the furnace and going back to sleep thinking it’s solved, then waking up freezing again. The default mode it was on would turn it on for 30 minutes at a time, which is enough to go from 40 to 45 in the van. At 5am, I groggily clicked through settings and extended the run time to 75 minutes and it got us back to something approaching survivable. I can’t imagine how our family would have handled tent camping, like many people are doing around here.
I threw on several layers of clothes and went outside to it snowing. Did they not get the memo here that it’s the end of May? I need some coffee. No Keurig machine in this camper, but it did come with a French press. I had never used one before, but there wasn’t much to it. I setup the propane stove, put on a kettle with water, dumped the coffee and boiling water into the bottom, and used the press to push down the coffee grinds, leaving only the coffee.
Man, was that some good coffee. Starbucks should add a flavor called frozen French press in Yellowstone. Noelle and I sat in the van enjoying it while the kids slept shivering in their sleeping bags.
While we were drinking coffee, Noelle read the manual later and figured out there’s a mode that will have it run indefinitely, like a normal thermostat in your house. It will use a little more diesel, but that’s ok if it avoids another night like last night.
Warmed up with some coffee, I was ready to take on breakfast. I fired up the grill again and cooked eggs and bacon. I only had one pan, so did bacon first, dumped out the majority of the grease, and did the eggs second in pan, dirty style. The rangers better watch out, we’re riding dirty today. Noelle and I thought they were very good.
We shook the kids awake and made them eat and start to get dressed. They were cold and grouchy, but luckily they are kids and can be ordered to improve their moods (I wish that worked on spouses.)
We got a later start than I wanted after girls took forever to get ready. We took down the camper top and just left the bed down so they could bundle up there as we drove. The speed limit in the park is 45 and we’re usually going slower than that. Our campground is in a great location – 20 minutes from old faithful, the main attraction. Let’s go!
We parked fairly close to the front in one of the massive parking lots they have to support the summer crowds. We didn’t have internet in camp, so we had no idea of when the next eruption would happen, but all scrambled out to sit down on benches next to a bunch of other people that seemed like they knew it was happening soon.
For those that haven’t been, this whole park is on top of a very unique and massive volcano, leftover from a massive eruption that happened millions of years ago. The land has tons of cracks and crevices that can get down to the magma below that is much closer to the surface than in most other places. The combination of this allows things like old faithful, a geyser where water in the water systems gathers miles below, gets super heated building up pressure, to the point where it comes exploding out of the ground.
A few minutes later after we sat down, it started to erupt, or at least I think it is. It was so cold and windy, the eruption turned into a large steam cloud that blew into our view, causing us to move to a better spot. It was crazy to witness, although not the magnificent Bellagio fountain I was expecting.
20 min away from old faithful
Old Faithful
After the eruption, everyone dispersed to other places. We walked over to the gift shop to buy some stickers for the girls collections then walked over to some exhibits one Native American art and history of photography in Yellowstone. Yellowstone was the first national park and you have to imagine how important emerging photography field was to tell the rest of the country that it exists and is worth protecting. Now everyone just pulls out their phones and grabs a picture of anything and everything. How far we’ve come in 120 years.
We went inside the very nice visitor center next to learn more about the park. They had an amphitheater inside playing short films and we watched all 3 of them.
We were getting hungry by then and walked back to the van to make a quick sandwich lunch. Having your house with a fridge on wheels is very, very convenient. By then, the crowds were starting to arrive and that massive parking lot was fairly full. I bet this place is a zoo in July at peak season.
There is a trail of other geysers that starts next to old faithful, and we walked over there to check it out. It’s a boardwalk that crisscrosses around different thermal features. Some steamed up, some bubbled, some splattered, some stank of sulfur. All were very cool to me – the girls were less blown away.
There was one geyser in the back called grand geyser that goes off once or twice a day (lucky guy) and was already 30 minutes pass its eruption window that was 2 hours long. There were 20 people there waiting there (some for the whole 2.5 hours) so we sat down to see if we could see the show. We waited about 40 minutes through a few cycles of the turban geyser that it was connected to, but no grand eruption. I’m sure it will happen 5 minutes after we leave. The ranger there was trying to explain different other phenomena that had been happening recently that can cause geysers to be inconsistent. Even old faithful that used to be very consistent erupts randomly in a 20-30 minute window.
On the walk back we did see old faithful erupt one more time from a distance.
From there we walked over to the old faithful inn, a huge building that looked like a log cabin mansion. It was very cool on the inside – 3 or 4 levels with a very rustic feeling that is counterbalanced by the amount of people, gift shops, and restaurants inside.
That was enough geysers for today. We dropped by a gas station that was right there and filled up on diesel and drove to the next location – grand prismatic spring! We parked in one of the last spots in a pull out that was across the street and walked over.
Grand prismatic spring is a giant hot pool fed by a thermal spring. The different minerals, along with bacteria in the hot water cause it to be a different rainbow of colors that is usually quite beautiful. Today, since it was cold and windy, the cloud of steam coming off the water made it hard to see. It looked like a pretty blue/orange cloudy lake.
The best part to me was where the water from the pools was flowing off and creating an orange waterfall onto the river that ran next to it.
We left there and made one more 30 minute drive to complete our thermal feature tour at Norris basin. It is more of a substantial hike on a trail with more fancy geysers, bubbling pools, and my personal favorite – mud pots – bubbling pools of mud.
One really cool geyser there was steamboat geyser that was consistently spraying water and steam out.
We did the whole hike around one section of the basin. It was not as crowded as old faithful and had better things to see in my opinion. Lots of pretty pools and more interesting geysers. I did finally get my mud pot – a small one bubbling blue mud.
There was one other section that I wanted to checkout, but the girls had their fill of thermal features and needed to use the restroom so they left me to do a speed walk through that area. No more mud pots but one more good geyser that sprayed me with stinky sulfur water.
We drove back home with the girls playing uno on the bed.
Back at the campsite we finished setting everything up with chairs and tables and the whole family pitched in to make spaghetti with caesar salad. The girls played a little soccer and I got a fire going so we could have some s’mores. Lydia burns her marshmallows, but Victoria wisely cooked hers a golden toasty brown. It was a long day, so we went to bed a little early, this time with the thermostat set properly. We’ll sleep warmer tonight than the steam from old faithful.
