A Series of Eruptions


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Posted by Family Man (72.174.237.174) on 15:59:01 05/26/16

Made a quick trip through Yellowstone on the way home from Jackson last weekend (May 21 and 22). The weather when we arrived Saturday around 4 was cold and rainy. After settling into our room in the Yellowstone Inn (my first time staying there) and the skies finally cleared at about 6. My son and I took to the boardwalks, with an eye toward catching a Riverside Geyser eruption predicted for 9:10 PM (plus or minus 30 minutes). On the way through the geyser basin we enjoyed eruptions from both Oblong and Grotto, as well as seeing a large black bear run right-to-left across the open hillside behind Giant, splash across the river, and disappear into the trees on the west side of the bike trail. After strolling along as far as Morning Glory Pool we made our way back to Riverside to wait it out. All the benches were wet from the earlier rain, so we had to stand in the cold and breeze and hope that it might erupt on the early side of the predicted window. Alas, it did not erupt until about 9:15 or 9:20 by which time there was barley light enough to see it (the sun went down 40 minutes earlier, and the full moon was just coming over the horizon). After watching Riverside (my first time to catch it erupting) we quickly shuffled along the ice-covered boardwalks to get to Grand Geyser which was predicted to erupt at 9:30 (plus or minus an hour). We could hear Grand erupt before we could see it, but arrived in time to see about the last 80% of the eruption in the moonlight. After a walk back to the inn to check on the predicted time for Old Faithful we went out and waited about 10 minutes for one last eruption in the light of the full moon (darn clouds moved in to cover the moon just minutes before Old Faithful erupted but, oh well). Back to the Inn at about 11:00. My son commented that he was witness to one of the rarest sights in Yellowstone ¡V standing at Old Faithful waiting for an eruption with only 5 people instead of 500 º.



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