Geysers, part 2

We headed back to the Upper geyser basin to see the major geysers erupt.  As we were about to set out it started raining heavily.  We decided rain wasn't going to stop us.  Brian went to the car to get the rain gear and N2 and I waited.

As we got about a quarter mile or half mile from where we set out we started hearing thunder.  The thunderstorm was a little bit south of us so we decided to wait it out under some trees and then headed to Riverside geyser.  It was still raining and we were pretty wet but we were determined to see some geysers!  This is what our walk looked like, no one on the boardwalks whatsoever.  It was quite the change from the overcrowded geyser basin the day before.

We missed Daisy geyser go off due to the storm but we arrive at Riverside about 5 minutes before it started and we were the only people there.  As it started another 2 people showed up.  It was like having our own private viewing of a geyser!

Here is a video of Riverside

We left before Riverside was done because we didn't need to watch it for 20 minutes and we wanted to make sure we hit the other geysers due to go off.  As we were walking back we saw Grotto erupting.  We had seen the cone for Grotto the other day and loved how it looked.  It was splashing but not much was going on but when we saw it on this day there was much more water and lots of steam.

 Photo above was taken the day we didn't see it erupting.

Grotto went off for a long time (we could see the steam before we got to Riverside and we could see it long after we left) but we had to move on because we wanted to see Grand.  We headed to Grand geyser and noticed that Castle was erupting.  The park service couldn't predict Castle anymore because it had had a minor eruption the day before so we were lucky to see a major eruption.  By the time I got over to Castle it was pretty much just letting out steam but that was still impressive!  The roaring sound it made was amazing.

Noah was excited by how wet his hair got from the steam of the geyser.  He asked me to take a picture of his hair.

 We saw both Castle and Sawmill go off at the same time.  Plus we saw Castle with a rainbow from the storm that had just gone through.  It was so pretty!

We then had to sit around and wait for Grand to go off.  We met an amateur geyser watcher there who told us what to look for.  She said that Turbine geyser which is right next to it goes off every 20 minutes and once Grand's basin is really full it will go off just after Turbine.  We watched Turbine several times and then it finally went off.  It was hard to watch this one because there was so much steam.  We stay for the end of this one.

By this point it was getting fairly cool and we were wet so Natalie in particular was really cold.  Her shoes and socks didn't dry for days after this night!  Luckily we found several hot springs that were steaming and told her to stand near them on the boardwalk to warm herself up.  It worked for a while.  We decided to walk back on the boardwalk and we saw Lion geyser erupting.  It was mainly steam but the roar really was amazing!  I took a lot of pictures of this geyser because the sun was setting behind it and it was really beautiful.

As we were walking back from Lion we saw Old Faithful go off (we had seen it while we were waiting for Grand too).

If you haven't been at the geyser basin at sunset, I would recommend it.  It's neat to see the geysers go off when the sun it setting and there aren't tons of people around.  Here are my sunset pictures.   We think the steam in the first picture is from Grotto.  In the last picture, it is Castle steaming.

We are so thankful that we decided to head to the geyser basin on this evening since we got to see all the major geysers (minus Daisy) without that many people around.