Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park erupts approximately every 90 minutes.
Old Faithful Geyser, far right, is one of many geysers at Yellowstone National Park.
Castle Geyser in Yellowstone National Park erupts every 14 hours, on average.
Twelve feet across, Shield Spring is one of the many beautiful thermal features of Yellowstone National Park.
Despite the intense temperatures created at the the Yellowstone National Park geyser basins, plant life flourishes in spots.
Old Faithful eruptions can reach as high as 106 to 184 feet. Old Faithful Lodge is seen in the background on the left.
Streams of steam arose from the earth and floated into the stark blue sky to our left. One stream in particular, that from Old Faithful, seemed to produce just a slightly more prominent column.
At 6:24 a.m., only a few other early-risers dotted the viewing area boardwalk around the ancient geyser. Throughout Yellowstone National Park, there are over 500 active geysers. Six of those, including Old Faithful, erupt with predictability. Give or take 10 minutes, Old Faithful eruptions occur at 90-minute intervals.
Since the geyser hadn’t erupted in the first twenty or so minutes after our arrival, we could have been up for a decent wait. Or not.
Not knowing when the previous one had taken place to time the next eruption, my husband and I imposed upon a few of the others to see if they had any idea. None did. So the best we, and those around us, could do was wait patiently.
Waiting and wondering afforded us the opportunity to ponder our setting. So remarkable, this ground upon which we stood.
The complexity of hydrothermal features, it goes without saying, is far beyond anything I could ever even pretend to comprehend. The steam and the openings in the ground, I could wrap my head around. I just had to trust there was a great deal of activity going on underneath us. Networks of underground cavities filled with water and steam. Volcanic activity.
And every so often, the pressure becoming so great it had to escape.
The hydrothermal features are fascinating. And mostly the reason behind why Yellowstone became our country’s first national park in 1872.
Not willing to venture too far away from the basin, we decided to take advantage of the open seating closest to the geyser.
The coolness of the bench cut through our layers of clothes, and we wondered if maybe we should just stand and wait instead. The temperature may have been 36 degrees at that moment, but it was expected to climb into the high 70s before the end of the day. We were not accustomed to seeing our breath in the early mornings of June in Kentucky.
Nor were we accustomed to having first row seats to a geologic wonder.
As we waited, Old Faithful continued to hiss and to sputter a little more aggressively.
Is this it, we wondered? But it wasn’t. We knew this because a few minutes later, the geyser left no room for doubt.
For several minutes, Old Faithful released water and clouds of steam that stretched for over a hundred feet. And then it settled back into the state we’d originally witnessed.
Just as remarkable as we’d anticipated.
(Note: Marjorie Appelman is an English, communications and journalism teacher at Mason County High School and co-founder of the travel blog, Tales from the Trip, which is also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. She can be reached at marj.appelman@gmail.com.)
