Geysers

Today was a big (geyser) day.

Twenty percent of the known geysers in the world reside within a comparatively small area of Yellowstone NP. That's a lot - to be sure - but I guess I'd never really thought about them being anywhere else in the world. For the record, most of the rest are scattered throughout Iceland, Kamchatka (Siberia), and New Zealand.

We got lucky this morning and timed our arrival within 15 minutes of an Old Faithful eruption. It was impressive; however, as is often the case when expectations are high, it wasn't quite as impressive as I expected. That being the case, the most obvious course of action was to proceed a half-mile down the path to the largest 'predictable' geyser in the world: Grand Geyser.

The geyser 'forecast' (they only predict the timing of a handful of 'reliable' geysers…you've probably noticed I've been putting a lot in 'quotes') called for an eruption "within 2 hours of 11:45." Following the short tour of other thermal activity that proceeded on the path from Old Faithful, we arrived at Grand Geyser at roughly 10:55. Since we were within the 2-hour window, we made ourselves comfortable (there were benches) and we waited. 11:30, 12:00, 12:30, 1:00…by 1:00 p.m. the knowing glances from my dear, sweet, patient wife were becoming less humorous. Nevertheless, I stood steadfast and let her know that we'd be waiting for this no matter what…c'mon, it's the biggest…right?!

By 1:15 the crowd was getting larger and was getting plenty restless. We overheard a conversation between two groups of people sitting to our left who began to share stories about sitting in the rain the day prior only to leave disappointed. I asked when the scheduled eruption (the day prior) was to have taken place (within 2 hours of 3:30) and asked how long they stayed (1:30 to 6:30) only to leave without having seen the geyser erupt. I conceded to this missus that the chance of seeing an eruption was looking pretty slim. Already during our wait two other large geysers down the path (Daisy and Riverside) had erupted; how much more of the day was I willing to wait on a bench?

Dejected, I set off down the path to see the other items nearby - always turning my head back to Grand to make sure I wasn't missing anything. We wound up seeing some really interesting thermal features on our walk. Grotto Geyser was erupting the whole time we were in the vicinity. Its eruptions can be as brief as 90 minutes, or as lengthy as 12 hours! After making it all the way back down to Morning Glory pool we decided to double back toward Grand.

I had begun to think that we'd already missed it when we were out of site. However, as we approached again I saw that the crowd had swelled even further. The missus no longer had any interest in this 'predictable' geyser and really wanted to see one of the largest log cabin structures in the world (Old Faithful Inn). We agreed that she and the kids would go on to the inn and leave me to wait for another hour at Grand. However, as we got within a hundred yards of Grand we heard the crowd let out a collective gasp and cheer as the geyser finally erupted. We rushed on and got to see the 11-minute eruption in it's entirety. It was spectacular :) We later found out that this geyser hadn't erupted for more than 11 hours prior to the eruption we witnessed. Those of you who know me in real life can check out a one-minute movie of the eruption on my Facebook page.

We saw many other wonders during the course of the day, but we had the good fortune of catching Old Faithful erupt again as we were headed to the parking lot. I think I enjoyed the second time more than the first :)

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Okay, I'm sure to break this post-script habit soon, but I couldn't sign off without sharing my 'prediction' observation. During the course of the day I couldn't help but be reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry goes to pick up the car rental he's 'reserved' only to find they've run out of cars. I think that 'predictability' would indicate that you could reasonably forecast an event with some accuracy in the same way that a 'reservation' holds the car.