September 26…. Fire in the hole

Friday we started out by hiking along the Firehole Lake road. Hiking, not driving the road because it is closed. Some less-than-intelligent individual ignored the signs saying NO RV’S and went down it anyway and broke the bridge. 🤬

Anyway, it still makes for a pretty walk.

We then moved on to a hiking trail to the overlook for Grand Prismatic Spring. This spring has become even more of a Yellowstone icon than Old Faithful. When I was here back in 2018, the weather was much cooler, so the hot water and steam from the spring created a thick cloud of fog over it and we couldn’t see anything. This time, perfect! And fabulous!

The colors are breathtaking. Each band of color, from the green outward to yellows, oranges, and browns is a different strain of algae adapted to the cooling water temperature as it spreads from the center. The blue in the center is pure water pulling in the color of the sky. To stay pure, it has to be 167 degrees or more. A bit too hot to swim in.

A ranger told us of a recent incident at the spring, a buffalo walked too close and fell in. Instantly boiled to death, it floated around the spring for several months before park service people were able to drag it out. Yuck. 🤢

We relaxed for the afternoon, read our books by the river and broke out the grill and had a picnic.

In the evening, we took a tour in one of Yellowstone’s historic buses. They had the same kind of tour buses in Glacier, but those were red. Yellowstone’s are…. yellow.

Our bus was built in 1936, and at the height of their run, Yellowstone had almost 100 of these buses in service. In the 1950’s, they were slowly decommissioned and sold off till none remained. In recent years, the park service has been tracking them down around the world, buying them back and putting them back in service again. Eight of them are again running tours around the park.

It was great having a guide and for us to be able to sit back and relax as someone else did the driving.

Katie was our driver. I swear she told a story about being 11 in 1981, and when I repeated that to Susy, she just said NoWay is that girl 50+.

Turned out that her story was about a book she read when she was 11 ABOUT an event in the park in 1981. Makes more sense.

Anyway, she drove us around for a couple hours, showing us different places and telling us the history and happenings in the park. Even got to a couple waterfalls we didn’t know were there. Highly recommended.