Old Faithful Inn

One of the many perks of my job as a Floor Technician in Yellowstone is that I get paid to visit the entirety of the park rather than having to wait for the weekend to see anything other than Mammoth Hot Springs.  Last week I spent the night at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge hotel (an over $200 room for guests) while polishing up the floors for their big opening.  This week I'm back in Old Faithful and rather than just 2 days here we are spending all week prepping the Old Faithful Inn for opening.  The Old Faithful Inn is the largest wood structure on the planet and I get to clean every hardwood floor in the place.  I also get a room up on the 3rd floor and am a 10 foot walk down the hall to a balcony overlooking Old Faithful Geyser.  I saw Old Faithful erupt four times my first visit and it is certainly not something that gets old.  The first time I saw it was about 9 in the morning while it was 30 degrees and windy.  There were 6 other people.  The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th times that day were definitely more crowded and while it really didn't detract from the geyser much I'm still glad my first time was practically alone.  My current visit to Old Faithful involved a lot more exploring of additional geysers in the area.  There are quite a few more and though Old Faithful gets all the fame, other geysers are equally if not more impressive.  I sat on a log for 30 minutes waiting on Riverside Geyser which can be predicted accurately down to 90 to 120 minutes.  It shoots 70 feet high and is often accompanied by a rainbow (though not this time).  Its location definitely made it more beautiful than Old Faithful.  

As I walked back to Old Faithful Inn to work for the night I saw an unbelievably high cloud of steam shooting up about half a mile to my left.  I cannot be sure but based on my map and the short bursts of very high water coming from it I believe it was Grand Geyser, the tallest predictable geyser in the world, which erupts for 9-12 minutes and consists of 1-4 bursts reaching 200 feet high.  Morning Glory Pool was almost too pretty to be believed and there were many other lesser known thermal pools of stunning color such as Sapphire Pool and Chromatic Pool.  One nice thing about the Old Faithful area is you can walk the same boardwalk every day and have the chance to see something new and unique every time as only a few geysers erupt regularly or predictably. 

The snow is disappearing rapidly, other villages and roads are opening up, and some of the higher elevation trails are drying up and becoming accessible to hiking so there should be quite a bit more to see and post about shortly.