“Into the Abyss” and a trip to Old Faithful

8/26/2018 – West Yellowstone

We started off today intending to hike Fairy Falls, then go see the geysers at Mid Geyser Basin and the West Thumb Geyser basin, and finish off with a visit to Old Faithful. But we had to change our plans due to the crowds. I guess everyone else has figured out that a better time to come to Yellowstone is after kids go back to school. There are also a lot of international visitors.

We drove south and found it a little less crowded so we hiked around the West Thumb Geyser Basin and sat through a very informative Ranger Talk about the Yellowstone geysers and hot springs. I have never seen this part of the park and I have to say the clear, deep, colorful, boiling hot springs in West Thumb are really impressive. We look forward to going to Mid Geyser basin later in the week.

We then drove back north and joined the crowd to tour around the Old faithful area. We joined about 500 of our closest friends (lol) to watch the Old Faithful geyser erupt almost right on schedule. It is a magnificent sight. We also spent some time in a couple of the Yellowstone exhibit areas and talked to a Ranger about how different Yellowstone is in winter. Nancy and I would love to come back in winter to go snowmobiling.

After Old Faithful, we headed back home.

Nancy almost fell “into the abyss”, but she recovered nicely for a photo