Ockey Family Adventures: Yellowstone Day 5

We checked out of Roosevelt around eight o’clock and said goodbye to the Ferlans as they went home a day early. Our plan was to spend one more night in the park, and we wanted to try the cabins at Old Faithful because we’d never stayed in them before. We drove down through Dunraven Pass and across to Norris, stopping to hike Ice Lake along the way. We didn’t see much, but there was a goldeneye on the lake.

We are so proud of our three boys. They are great hikers!

Ice lake is an easy, pretty hike.

Because of an accident on the road we didn’t arrive at the Fairy Falls trailhead until ten o’clock. The parking lot was nearly full with people heading up to the brand new Grand Prismatic Overlook. We found one of the last spots and made our way out to Fairy Falls. The hike was flat and easy, but very long, and we were all tired by the time we reached the waterfall. It was beautiful, and the boys enjoyed throwing rocks in the pool for quite a while.

This is the view of Grand Prismatic Spring from the side. Wait for the better view in later pictures.

Dad is the best storyteller to get these kids through hikes!

Teenagers!

We were excited to be back at Fairy Falls.

Seth loved climbing on this huge log.

Fairy Falls is impressive.

Mom needed a little break.

The boys enjoyed throwing rocks and making big splashes.

On the way back, we decided to take the detour up to the top of the ridge to overlook Grand Prismatic Spring, and we were glad we did. The view from above the spring is really spectacular. There were nearly a hundred people up there when we arrived, but we squeezed ourselves in for a family picture. Unfortunately, this extra mileage wore Seth out, and he got pretty grumpy at the end of the hike. But Dad only carried him about fifty yards. Then he got excited about watching an osprey dive in the river after a fish and forgot that he was tired.

The first person we asked to take our family picture took this one. We laughed and then asked someone else.

This picture was much better.

The end/beginning of the Fairy Falls trail has this hot pot. It's so pretty.

We ate lunch in the parking lot at Old Faithful after finding one of the last spots in the parking lot. Then we headed into the general store to reward ourselves with huckleberry ice cream. We watched Old Faithful and then took the short loop around to see our favorite geyser, which is a tiny one called Anemone. It goes off every ten minutes, so there is always a show. Farther down the trail we saw that there was a crowd gathering for Grand Geyser. This is one of the largest in the basin, and it was supposed to go off around 4:45, which was only a half-hour away. That would work perfectly, since we were supposed to meet Melanie at five o’clock, and it was about a fifteen minute walk back to the Visitor Center.

Ice Cream made waiting for Old Faithful much better.

Good Old Old Faithful!

We love Anemone Geyser.

Seth was so excited to watch Anemone.

Mark loves everything Yellowstone.

We waited and waited. At ten until five, we found out that the prediction window for this geyser was plus/minus forty-five minutes. That meant that it might not go off until five thirty! We decided to wait it out anyway. Luckily, it went off a few minutes after five o’clock, and it was really amazing. The spray was quite a bit larger and higher than Old Faithful, and it lasted much longer. Best of all, we were considerably closer. Mom liked best that there was a separate stream shooting to the side, but Dad enjoyed watching it sputter and spurt up to two hundred feet high, rather than shooting one steady stream like the other geysers.

We had fun waiting for Grand Geyser.

We were excited to see a new geyser we haven't watched before.

Grand Geyser was very impressive.

It erupted for a very long time and went very high!

Dad loved it! Mom, too!

It was five-thirty when we met Melanie at the Visitor Center. We got checked into the cabins and started work on the Junior Scientist Program. The boys all wanted to do it, even though it was more involved and required going out to the basin again. We grabbed dinner at the grill, which turned out to be pretty good, and then went back out to see some geysers for the boys to draw in their books. It was a slow pleasant walk without too many mosquitos, which is what we needed after our long hot day in this end of the park. Mark even spotted a weasel running down by the river as we crossed back over to the Visitor Center. It was great to get back to the cabin, too. Even though it was a bit expensive, it was much nicer than the tiny place in Roosevelt. It even had a bathroom!