Geysers Galore

In July of 2014, my boyfriend and I took a trip out West and spent two days at Yellowstone National Park. As the sun was sinking lower in the sky on our first day, we decided to take a small detour on our way out of the park to do a quick loop on the roughly two mile long Firehole Lake Drive. There were two roadside stops, one by White Dome Geyser and the other by Firehole Lake itself.As we approached White Dome Geyser, it began to erupt and surprised us. We had not seen any other geyser as large as this, so when we finally reached the geyser I jumped out of the car to shoot several quick photos to try to capture the movement of the erupting geyser.

Yellowstone National Park, 2014, Sarah Kleinhesselink

Yellowstone National Park, 2014, National Park Service

We continued to the second roadside stop, getting out of the car to stretch our legs and walk along the boardwalk around Firehole Lake. The feature that captured our hearts was the small, but steady Young Hopeful Geyser. Several other small, bubbling geysers surrounded Firehole Lake, and the area was excitingly active in terms of geothermal activity. They built the boardwalk partially over standing water, so the steam that came off the water rose all around us. This blanket of steam gave the area a close, intimate feel. We happened to be completely alone on the boardwalk, so I knelt down took a few shots of the burnt orange microbial mats under the surface of the water. I dipped my fingers into the water, enjoying the warmth of the water and the steam around me, remembering that this was warmth escaping from the center of the earth. This place gave a much more intimate experience with the features of Yellowstone that we did not get in any other part of the Park, and yet it was nearly empty. We only saw one other pair of people the entire time we walked along the boardwalk, and we started asking ourselves why no one else seemed to visit these features we thought were some of the best. These features were lively and active and made everything we had read about Yellowstone’s geothermal activity more real. There were literally holes in the ground, right off the boardwalk and road, with steam rising from them We left thinking that Firehole Lake Drive was the most striking example of active and changing geothermal activity in the Park, but found out we didn’t even know the whole story.

Yellowstone National Park, 2014, Sarah Kleinhesselink

As we drove through southern Wyoming a few days later, my mother shared a link with me about how Yellowstone officials had closed Firehole Lake Drive until the morning we toured it due to increased geothermal activity that had melted sections of the road. It was interesting to find out that we had been on that road right after they had reopened it, but we laughed about how it was not too surprising seeing as there were giant, steaming holes opening up next to the road and boardwalks. Nevertheless, that experience made all the words we had read about geothermal activity at Yellowstone a real thing that we had seen, touched, and experienced in a personal and intimate way.