Blog

Yellowstone 17th day - Prismatic Spring

9/20/2020

Today, we visit more geysers, springs and other thermal features. We got up early to make the drive drive down to Prismatic Spring. We plan to stop at as many other things we find interesting on the way back to the RV until we decide to call it a day.

The water from the spring flows into the river. It is hot and it is a lot of water.

It was a very cool morning. When we arrived at the spring, which is a gigantic thermal feature, the air was 40 degrees. With the air that cool the steam rising off the spring was thick and spread out and up a hundred yards. Many times it completely obscured seeing the feature.

Excelsior Geyser was known as a spectacular geyser in the past but is now not much more than a huge hot spring. Now it only occasionally shows any eruption and even then it is only a few feet tall. Our problem was because the morning was so cool, the steam was thick over the pool.

Prismatic was difficult to see.

As we walked back toward the parking lot, there was one spring that steam was not completely obscuring.

After walking around on the boardwalk, we decided to hike the Fairy Falls trail. This area is very active. There are hot springs all around.

From the trail, there is an overlook of the Prismatic.

On the return trip, we took several side roads. The first was Firehole Lade drive. It is only 2 miles but passes several geysers and springs.

Firehole Spring was the first spring on the drive.

Surprise Pool.
I did not get why it got the name but the names of some of the geysers don't seem to make sense. Maybe the surprise was what would happen if you smoke near it.

Great Fountain Geyser goes off about every 12 hours and sprays water up to 200 feet in the air. We missed it this morning. If we had turned in instead of driving to Prismatic, we would have seen the eruption. Timing is everything. It will be dark before the next eruption.