Old Faithful Tavern

[July 11]
Today we decided to head to all of the geysers around the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. When we arrived, Old Faithful was just about to go off, so we sat and watched that again. It was getting to be close to lunch time (ok, really brunch, but we were hungry). We decided to head over to the Old Faithful Inn to see if we could get lunch. We walked into the original ‘tavern’ that was built in one year back in 1904 (originally it was called the Old Faithful Tavern instead of an Inn). We know that interesting fact and more because when we walked in there was a tour *just* starting that we got to go on. We got to hear some great history of the building, the disasters and close calls it has had; the stories about the lobby and it custom mechanical clock; and about the Blacksmith who had the best job during construction. We also got to tour an original guest room, no TV or bathroom in that suite! It was a great tour. After our tour we did get to have lunch in the original dining room. Mmmm, Bison Chili…

Then we walked around and saw a whole bunch of pools and geysers. Our favorite features are the pools, maybe because it real hot out and they look so inviting. We really like looking at Morning Glory. It has such pretty colors. They have signs everywhere telling people not to throw objects in the pool as it clogs it and it looses a lot of its cool color features. You are to report anyone to a Ranger immediately. They do bring in a big truck every year and remove a whole bunch of debris that people have thrown in. It’s sad that something so unique could be ruined by people being thoughtless and stupid.

After Old Faithful area we drove around and some scattered geysers and pools near by, working our way counter-clockwise around the southern loop. We made it as far as the Grand Prismatic Spring. It just like Morning Glory but ~350 foot across! It’s so massive and the colors are just magnificent. We really liked it there. Its be great if they had build a little viewing tower so you could see over it and really get to take in the full scene.

We turned to head back to our campsite. We wanted to finally get back in time to spend time at our site. We made some sweet and sour pork with rice out of a dehydrated camping pouch. Wow, that was great! That was out first meal cooked out of the back of the teardrop ;) After dinner we sat around our little fire for a while, then went to the teardrop to start watching a movie. We were soon exhausted and called it a night.