09.11.2024 Wednesday Day 11 Yellowstone

Cool here this morning at 50 degrees but warming to 70 later this afternoon. Slight chance of sprinkles.
Today we had breakfast at Running Bear Pancake House. Excellent. We toured West Yellowstone today as far as Old Faithful. Our first stop was the Upper Basin Geyser. We also stopped at Emerald Basin along with seeing Fountain Pots and Fountain Geyser.
The park is busy so there is a wait for parking spots.
We continued on to Middle Basin to see the Grand Prismatic Basin. What a gorgeous area. There were waterfalls coming from Excelsior Geyser Crater. Excelsior Geyser Crater, formerly known as Excelsior Geyser, is a dormant fountain-type geyser in the Midway Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. An expedition by the U.S. Fish Commission in the summer of 1890 found that it had become an active geyser that erupted frequently but this active period soon ended. It is believed that the powerful eruptions had broken off sections of stone that had damaged its internal plumbing system.
In 1985, Excelsior returned to activity for a 46-hour period from September 14 to 16. These eruptions were relatively small at 30 feet (9.1 m) but a few were as much as 80 feet (24 m) tall and 100 feet (30 m) wide. All of these eruptions lasted about 2 minutes at intervals of 5 to 66 minutes.
The Excelsior Geyser no longer erupts but the pool discharges 4,000 to 4,500 gallons of 199 °F water per minute directly into the Firehole River.
Opal although small was pretty.
Our final sightseeing stop for the day was Old Faithful. She is spectacular to see in person. We visited the Old Faithful Inn, Visitor Center and shopped the general store for our magnet.
We returned to West Yellowstone for a very late lunch at the Buffalo Bar. Back to our hotel for an early night in.Read more