Cool Nights in a Large Volcano- Yellowstone Pt 2

Our second day in the park was our big volcano day. Not everyone may be aware, but Yellowstone is in fact an enormous active volcano. It erupts sparingly, once every few hundred thousand years, but a major eruption would significantly change weather patterns in the northern hemisphere for years (beyond leaving a big scar across the West of course). Inside this volcano is a plethora of cool volcanic features, and we set out to see as many as we could.

First was West Thumb, a section of Yellowstone Lake that opened up with the last eruption about 150,000 years ago. West Thumb has a number of cool steam vents, geysers, and pools.

West Thumb from across the lake.

Checking out the boiling hot pools. She's saying "that's stinky, mom!"

Nice lake view from the volcanic features.

Bacteria make the beautiful blue seen in many of the pools in Yellowstone.

Next we headed to Old Faithful, the most famous feature in the park. It's the big geyser with the most predictable eruption timing in a short timeframe - about once every 90 minutes - though it's not the tallest or the most frequent. We hung out for a show, and Ella enjoyed it until near the end when she got spritzed in the face with warm sulfur water.

Yay, it's a geyser!

Woosh!

We then went by Midway Geyser Basin. It was packed then so we actually continued on and came back the next morning. Midway is home to Grand Prismatic Spring, one of the "postcard views" of Yellowstone.

We then stopped at the Fountain Paint Pots, mud pits alongside steam vents, geysers, and springs.

A little sulfur-y pool

Heading along the glowing bacteria mats

A steam vent. It was pretty loud!

Our last section of the day was a long drive through the north side of the park, up to Mammoth Hot Springs.

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Mammoth Hot Springs

The narrow road was under construction, so it took quite a while to navigate with white knuckles, but we made it to several pretty areas before calling it a day at Canyon Village, our camping spot for the night.

The weather in the park really surprised us in one way... it was beautiful during the day, but it was really cold at night! It got down as low as 38 degrees. Luckily, we had plenty of warm sleep clothes to bundle up in as Canyon Village did not have hookups or allow generators after 8pm. Brrr.

Daddy got creative in the middle of the night!