9/22/2021 - Wednesday - Lone Star Geyser, Grand Tetons, and FINALLY Old Faithful

On Wednesday, we set out to see the Lone Star Geyser. This gave us the only real hike of the trip, as the geyser is almost two and a half miles from the parking lot. It erupts about every three hours, but it is remote enough that it is not monitored by any regular staff, so many of its eruptions go un-noticed. They have a logbook on a pedestal in which tourists are encouraged to describe what they saw, and when they saw it. When we arrived, we (and the two hikers to arrived about 10 minutes earlier) were the first people of the day, so we had to guess when it might erupt based on the last entry of the previous day.

After about a half hour, a family of two parents and two delightful children arrived - and only a few minutes later, the geyser erupted! It was not a big eruption, and stopped after about ten minutes.

We'd hoped for more, and waited about ten minutes, gave up, and started walking back. We hadn't gone very far when we heard some noise behind us, turned around, and walked back. The real eruption was not beginning!

As we walked back to the parking lot, we ran into a number of groups who wanted to hear about what we'd seen. One of them noticed my Cleveland Hiking Club shirt and asked if we were from Cleveland. We acknowledged that we were, and they told us they were from Wooster, Ohio. When we told them that our daughter had been at graduate school at Ohio State at the Wooster campus, the woman said that she had worked there - and it turned out that she knew our daughter! Small world!

After returning to the parking lot, we had lunch, where we were joined by two curious people-watchers:

From there, we went to the Grand Tetons - another national park which is adjacent to Yellowstone. Even before we saw the majestic mountains, we were taken aback by a very surprising sight - a huge lake basin which is drying out dramatically. These pictures show Jackson Lake - the third one is a panorama which is somewhat distorted:

Apparently, the drying out of the lake is a combination of draught, warm weather, and water management. The lake has existed for millenia, but a dam was built at the south end, making it much wider and deeper. Due to the warmer weather, the snow pack on the mountains melted more quickly than usual this year, so that there was a rush of water early in the season, and much less after that. Meantime, the warm weather persisted, so now shallower lake lost more water to evaporation. The downstream Snake River feeds the fertile potato farms of Idaho, so the dam at the south end is releasing the same amount of water as usual. Hence, the lake is receiving very little water, evaporating much of that, and releasing much of the rest downstream. I wonder how long this can keep going on before it dries up completely. If there are any geohydrologists reading this, perhaps you can add some insights in a comment.

Here are some pictures taken at or near the dam:

The mountains are as spectacular as their reputation. Here are some pictures:

Continuing through Grand Teton, we were surprised to see a little chapel appear seemingly from nowhere. As we learned, in 1937, a local family provided funding for building this log cabin church at the south shore of Lake Jackson. The chapel has seen its share of severe weather, but when repairs were needed, donors were found to fund them. Two families make their donations in 2003 in memory of the victims of 9/11.

We returned to our hotel at about 4:20 PM, and saw a big crowd gathering by Old Faithful. As we moved towards it, the eruption began. Here are a few pictures:

After dropping off the day's supplies in our hotel room, we made the short walk to Castle Geyser, which has an imposing dome and is known for putting on some impressive displays. It didn't disappoint us - erupting about 45 minutes after we arrived, pretty much right on schedule! Like Lone Star earlier in the day, it stopped and then started again!