August 1, 1926 (Sunday)
I must tell you a joke on us. We were all looking for Fountain Geyser which was to be our first site in Yellowstone Park. We saw a sign called Fountain Road and turned off without parking at a nearby ranger station. Lynn and Irl were ahead and they just beat it along and we came to a small mound and saw steam and decided it was Fountain Geyser, but there ahead were Lynn and Irl so we took after them frantically blowing our horn but they couldn’t hear. I think we chased them at least a mile before catching them, then all came back and looked at the before-mentioned steaming mound. We tried to get the boys to take the car and go back to the ranger station a quarter of a mile away to find out when it would erupt but they wouldn’t do it. So, Shirley and Bernice went and came back laughing. It wasn’t Fountain Geyser at all – only a hot pool.
Our drive from here on into the “lower basin” was full of wonders. Fountain Geyser was a gorgeous pool of hot water – a beautiful blue, another was of wondrous green, and smaller ones around of various shades of blue, green, orange shading to brown pink, lavender, gray, mauve. It is simply indescribable.
This p.m. we saw Excelsior Geyser, Turquoise Pool and Prismatic Lake – all close together. Turquoise Pool was a heavenly blue such as I’ve never seen before about 30 feet across. Excelsior Geyser was in a pit with walls, say 25 feet high. It was as big as the house yard, I’d say, of a deep blue and boiling and splashing up in different places. It was shaded to paler tints at edge and flowed down over a many-colored bluff into the Firehole Ri
ver. Prismatic Lake had so many colors – blue, green, gold, orange, bronze, brown, pinks, lavenders, wine. No time for more description.
We went on and camped at Old Faithful campground. We saw the geyser spout, got some souvenirs, etc.
I must tell you a joke on us. We were all looking for Fountain Geyser which was to be our first site in Yellowstone Park. We saw a sign called Fountain Road and turned off without parking at a nearby ranger station. Lynn and Irl were ahead and they just beat it along and we came to a small mound and saw steam and decided it was Fountain Geyser, but there ahead were Lynn and Irl so we took after them frantically blowing our horn but they couldn’t hear. I think we chased them at least a mile before catching them, then all came back and looked at the before-mentioned steaming mound. We tried to get the boys to take the car and go back to the ranger station a quarter of a mile away to find out when it would erupt but they wouldn’t do it. So, Shirley and Bernice went and came back laughing. It wasn’t Fountain Geyser at all – only a hot pool.
Our drive from here on into the “lower basin” was full of wonders. Fountain Geyser was a gorgeous pool of hot water – a beautiful blue, another was of wondrous green, and smaller ones around of various shades of blue, green, orange shading to brown pink, lavender, gray, mauve. It is simply indescribable.
This p.m. we saw Excelsior Geyser, Turquoise Pool and Prismatic Lake – all close together. Turquoise Pool was a heavenly blue such as I’ve never seen before about 30 feet across. Excelsior Geyser was in a pit with walls, say 25 feet high. It was as big as the house yard, I’d say, of a deep blue and boiling and splashing up in different places. It was shaded to paler tints at edge and flowed down over a many-colored bluff into the Firehole Ri
ver. Prismatic Lake had so many colors – blue, green, gold, orange, bronze, brown, pinks, lavenders, wine. No time for more description.We went on and camped at Old Faithful campground. We saw the geyser spout, got some souvenirs, etc.
[So -- It took five days of travel from Gilbert to the Yellowstone gate. The party will now spend at least a week vacationing between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The top photo, from the box of postcards, of course, is of Old Faithful at sunrise. The lower is of Excelsior Geyser. I suspect many of their photos did not turn out which must have been disappointing. Ina writes less now that they are at their destination. She was probably too busy sightseeing to write.]
2 comments:
Those are neat postcards! I would have sat and stared at that hot pool for an hour before I thought it might not be the right spot. How funny!
I'm glad you like the postcards. They probably began as black & white photos that were colorized through some process. Did you get the impression, tho, that Earle & Lynn were not convinced that the hot pool was the right spot? They were not going to risk the embarrassment of being wrong by asking for official info. Last week I heard on the news that in Ina's day Old Faithful "blew" every 61 minutes. This was true until a series of earthquakes from 1959 thru the mid-'70s caused the time to lengthen to an hour and 15 minutes. Now, apparently due to the drought, it blows every 90 minutes. KW
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