Old Faithful in Yellowstone
September 4-7, 2026. We are in Yellowstone for about 10 days total, but in three different areas. For these days we were located at the Old Faithful Inn next to the Old Faithful Geyser. It so happens that these 4 days were over Labor Day Weekend. Who plans to stay in Yellowstone over Labor Day Weekend?
We said good-bye to the tall straight trees of Mount Rainier,
and we flew from Sea-tac Airport to Bozeman Montana.
Our experience with the American Airlines lounge was much better than last time. Mostly because we got to meet a traveling bunny.
Our flight was early and non-eventful. (T-Shirt was from my neighbor in Jax Beach who is from Montana...), except Buni wanted to ride a dinasaur in the airport.
The drive to Yellowstone National Park was long and took about 2.5 hours. Once in the park we drove by several bison and an elk, but didn't stop because there was a lot of traffic and we wanted to get to the hotel. Our wait to enter the park was only about 5 minutes, but later a park ranger said it could have been well over 3 hours.
Yellowstone National Park was the world's first national park, established by Ulysses S. Grant in March 1872. It is BIG - 3472 square miles.
The Old Faithful Inn fun facts:
-It was built in 1903–1904 and is widely considered the largest log structure in the world. It replaced the prior hotel which burned down.
-It is the only hotel in the park that does NOT have WIFI "to stay in keeping with the spirit of the hotel".
(sidenote: the only cellular infrastructure in the entire park is Verizon which is not my carrier).
(another sidenote: all the other hotels had wifi except ours)
- The structure is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
-The architect was self taught
-The towering, seven-story lobby features a hand-crafted clock made of copper, wood, and wrought iron,
along with whimsical branch railings made from "freaks of the forest"
Our room is average and amazingly expensive, but at least it has an en-suite bathroom which isn't the case for rooms in the old hotel proper.
The view from our window is a geyser field (or "geezer field" as the British pronounce it)
Our first stop after checking in was going to see Old Faithful since we had late dinner reservations.
Old Faithful fun facts:
Frequency: It erupts about 20 times a day, roughly every 90 to 100 minutes.
Duration: Each eruption lasts between 1.5 and 5 minutes.
Height: Water shoots up between 106 and 180 feet (32 to 55 meters) high on average.
Water Volume: An eruption expels about 3,700 to 8,400 gallons (14,000 to 32,000 liters) of boiling water
You can see it erupt from a long way away - this photo was from at least a half mile away.... My editor insists that I say the above photos were only 1/8 mile away from the geyser, while this one was from much further away - at least half a mile to a mile away while we looked at other geysers and springs in the thermal field.
Dinner was in the dining room.
I had a local cider, a buffalo burger and fries which was pretty good. Everything else was insanely expensive and/or looked like it had been on a steam table forever.
After dinner we went to see the geyser erupt in the dark which was pretty impressive for me (Chris was underwhelmed). There was a pretty good display of stars, but we need to get away from the lights - a goal for another night.
Hike 1: Old Faithfull Inn to Mystic Falls. 10.3 miles and 1366 elevation gain. Coddiwomple rating: 6/10. (Saw most of the important sites in this area of Yellowstone, crowds were amazingly sparce considering the holiday, no wildlife sighted.)
Our first stop was to buy bear spray even though I was sure no self-respecting bear would be anywhere near this area on Labor Day weekend. We didn't think a bear would try to attack us while we were buying it, but buni saved us. (no bunnies were harmed when taking these photos.)
The trail wound around up to the view point where we got good views of the lodges and Old Faithful.
Then it went through the thermal valley where we saw many different geysers (over 400). I won't bore you with each one, but my favorite was solitary geyser (up a hill and somehow calming). They made me appreciate the Old Faithful eruptions.
After solitary geyser we saw Marigold Spring, which was another of our favorites.
Part of the trail was closed due to a recent geyser eruption (!) and we had to "overland" to start the portion of the hike to Mystic Falls which was worth the trip. There was even a rock in the shape of a bunny. We had lunch there.
No wildlife that day, except for this pair of mating dragonflies
Dinner was at the same restaurant and earlier. We were better at ordering and shared another buffalo burger and a mediterranean plate. I had ice cream for dessert - one scoop vanilla and one was gold digger (coffee, chocolate chips, and caramel).
Hike 2: Fairy Falls Trail: 6:56 miles (7.56 in total because we had to walk to our parking spot because the parking lot was full) 800 foot elevation gain, sunny day, about 70 degrees. Coddiwomple rating: 3/10 (way too crowded, no wildlife, headwind coming back)
Not much to report, other than seeing the Prismatic Spring, which was beautiful once you could get through the crowd to see it. We saw it from the elevated viewing, so I think was better than had we gone to the "level viewing" (which was later confirmed - see below).
Then we trudged another mile to see Fairy Falls. Thankfully fewer people were on this part of the trail. There was nothing to see along the way except scrub-like forest. The Falls were pretty, but the few people there insisted on talking all the time and not allowing quiet to just view the falls.
I lied. We did see a frog.
The best part was the next mile and a bit was that we saw almost no one. Once we got to Imperial Geyser there was NO ONE. We had, not only 30 minutes of uninterrupted peace, but also an experience where we could walk right up to the geyser
and mud pots (fumarole) -
-without any warning signs or guard rails. It was amazing and worth the other 90% of the boring hike.
As mentioned above, we thought we might be missing something by not seeing Prismatic Spring at the normal viewing platform. What a mistake. It was SO crowded and it turned out that the visibility was way worse than seeing it from the elevated view. Below you can see the eye level view vs. the elevated view.
The only interesting part of this area was seeing the water from the spring fall into the local river and the colors in the area.
One thing that rehabilitated the day was our next stop - the Paint Pots.
In the distance we could see a herd of bison.
Dinner was a chicken ceasar which was very ordinary.
Best of the 4 days was the Imperial Spring, seeing Old Faithful at night and seeing the herd of bison. I think I will be a bit relieved tomorrow when we leave for Mammoth Hot Springs.
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