Old Faithful

So it turns out the kids aren't as interested in geothermal features as I am, so we didn't spend as much gawking at them as I'd hoped on this trip. But we would have been embarassed to go to Yellowstone without visiting Old Faithful, so by golly we went. We traded a few kid passengers between our van and the Donn's van, just to keep things interesting, and then made our way the hour or so to the geyser itself.

Old Faithful has long been optimized for tourist consumption, which is what you'd expect from the oldest national park. A long U of benches makes it easy to get a good seat for the show, and wandering rangers provide estimates for the next blow. We were there about 35 minutes before the next event, so we bagged seats right in the middle.




This also gave me time to work on my photography series of people with their backs turned to famous landmarks.





Finally, it erupted.




The kids were much impressed.





Afterward, we all went for a picnic, which required a trip to the Old Faithful General Store. I waited outside with the kids, including the 10 and 13 year old girls, who saw fit to climb the outside of the building, and which I saw fit to allow. I even let Miranda get in on the action.




Eventually, we made our way to the picnic area on the far side of the parking lot, and it ended up being as nice a day as you could imagine. Our packing the chairs and the crew-together table finally paid off, and we had plenty of food, and nature or previous visitors has seen fit to construct a teeter-totter from spare tree-arts, and you just can't ask for more than that.