The Great Western Road Trip 2018: Yellowstone (Day 3)

We left the most famous areas of the park for our last day. We packed up our stuff at Canyon and headed back towards Norris and then on to Old Faithful, stopping to see Grand Prismatic Spring and a few other things along the way:

When we checked out of Canyon, there was a buffalo in front of the door of the lodge

Norris Geyser Basin

 

 

Steamboat Geyser

Minute Geyser

Thermal pool - the water is boiling

After Norris, we stopped at Artist Paint Pots:

Mud Pot - it was very soothing to watch

Paint Pots

We made another quick stop at Gibbon Falls:

And then on to Midway Geyser Basin:

Aquamarine Pool

First look at Grand Prismatic

Closer look at the colors

We were all pretty worn out after this walk and decided to head to the lodge to check in. We got there pretty close to when Old Faithful was predicted to erupt, so we made our way over to the geyser. They can predict the times +/- ten minutes usually, but it was late both times we watched it erupt (the second time by almost 25 minutes!):

First eruptions

Getting taller

Full steam

Settling back down

All done

After the eruption, we had a celebratory dinner in the lodge dining room:

Sweet kids waiting for a table

And then wandered over to the original lodge to look around and watch Old Faithful erupt one more time:

 

Afterwards, we headed back to our lodge, where we had a hard time getting the kids to split up to their own rooms (it was our last night together):