I woke up early to as much of the Yellowstone traffic as possible, as I left the campsite an elk was grazing on one of the camping loops. I got to Yellowstone Lake just in time to watch the sun rising over the far side.
The morning’s ride around the lake was much more pleasant with fresh legs and still air. At the junction at the south of the loop is the West Thumb, a large caldera from a volcano eruption that forms a particularly deep part of the lake, and that’s also still geologically active with thermals. I walked around the hydrothermal features early in the morning with only a few other people around instead of the normal Yellowstone crowds.
From here I continued clockwise essentially riding backwards on the TransAmerica, crossing over the continental divide twice to get to Old Faithful. I arrived only 10 minutes before an eruption. The park rangers watch the eruptions with a field glass and stopwatch and use the duration to predict the next eruption, which they display in the visitor center. It erupts roughly once every 90 minutes. I walked around the loop near Old Faithful, which sits beside Fire River, which along its length has a series of hydrothermal features. Each one is different and weird and still on the second day look otherworldly, and unnatural.
After watching the next eruption at Old Faithful I followed the bike path to Biscuit Basin, and again each mud pot, hot spring, geyser, and fumarole was weird and wonderful. After lunch I rode back to Old Faithful and watched an eruption again, this time watching downwind and getting sprayed with the water, it was time to head to camp.
I cycled back over the continental divide twice, today I’ve crossed it four times(!) and finally to Grant Village, just south of the West Thumb junction. I made hardly any forward progress on the trail but I still put a lot of miles on the odometer, and I still managed to spend a lot of the day enjoying Yellowstone. I saw a lot of the geyser basins but there’s a lot I didn’t see, I would love to come back some day. Tomorrow I’ll cycle south out of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton.
