20 years that I've been dreaming of visiting this mythical National Park, the oldest with such status in the world. And we only had a day to enjoy it...! But we made the most of it. We left Billings at 7 am and were at Mammoth Hot Springs by 9 am.
Spectacular multi colored fall in terraces and already some crowd (and, for my pandemic coverage report, less than half wearing a mask...).
From there we drove down to the Norris Geyser Basin, in full activity. We also hiked to the Steamboat geyser: the highest eruptions in the world but not as frequent.
A quick stop at the Gibbon Falls, before the Madison junction point, where I changed to start running from the Fountain Flat Drive cycle path.
It's called a cycle path but I saw more hikers and horse riders than bike (bikes prefer asphalt lanes which Grand Teton is super rich of, in the Jackson area, further South).
At the end of that fire road, I reached the lookout over the incredibly colorful Grand Prismatic Spring.
I had to run alongside the busy road before finding a super nice trail connecting to the super famous and touristic Old Faithful geyser.
This geyser holds its name to the fact that he erupts very predictably every 60 to 90 minutes, a boon for the visitors. Luckily, I arrived 5 minutes before it erupted, lucky me!
On the way, the Power Line Trail passed along boiling pools off the touristic trails so I was able to taste the water, I mean just tipping my fingers in! 60F is hot... In one pool you could see down as much as 6 feet (estimate). Another pool looked like the Grand Prismatic Spring, in miniature.
Overall, a relatively flat run but a super tough one from a breathing standpoint, at 7,200-7,500 feet of elevation. As much as I wanted for Tahoe Rim Trail 100-mile to happen in July, in retrospective, I'm very glad it got cancelled as I already enough breathing issues since February, at sea level.
Check this 3D fly over, it has some pictures inserted (click on
this link or the image below):
I have to add that, with 8.6 miles, I barely scratched 1% of the surface of the Yellowstone's running potential: this National Park boasts more than 1,000 miles of trails!!!
From Old Faithful, we exited the Park to the South, saw some wild life again, and driving straight to Jackson and having an appetizer of the Grand Teton National Park by crossing it at sunset. A long Day 6 full of amazing images of our Planet Earth, if not on fire, on steam!
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