"Yellowstone is my happy place"

Day 6.

Our last full day in the park was spent mostly geyser-gazing.  In the morning I checked the predictions at the visitor center, of course, and learned that Grand's window was in the afternoon.  L needed to do some gift shopping in the morning (she has grandkids, among other people, who would have been vastly disappointed if she'd come home without something for them), and then we ate lunch on the balcony at the Old Faithful Inn, while being entertained by Old Faithful itself, of course.

Old Faithful from the balcony above the Inn's porte cochere.

Afterwards we wandered around the inside of the Inn, and I took a few pictures.

From the mezzanine on the second floor.

It is a spectacularly beautiful building, inside and out.  All the hardware was hand-forged on the site in 1903, including the enormous clock on the chimney in the above picture.

By that time, it was time to wander down to Grand so that L could see an eruption (I wasn't about to turn down a second viewing, either).  We had to go back to the cabin first, and on the way we saw a geyser in the distance that, to the best of my knowledge, was either Aurum or Anemone (see if you can tell from the picture in the park service webcam link).

Aurum or Anemone geyser -- the steam plume at the left edge of the photo is Old Faithful

On our way over the boardwalk on Geyser Hill, we saw some bluebirds.  I don't think I've ever seen so many mountain bluebirds as we did on this trip, either.  Here's a picture of a pair.

Female on the tree stump, male on the ground.

The big excitement on our stroll to Grand took place when Lion Geyser erupted just as we were approaching it.  I've seen Lion erupt from a distance before, but never close up.  It was extremely exciting [g].

Lion Geyser

And, finally, we arrived at Grand.  Which promptly went off a whopping 20 minutes into its window.  I kept telling L how spoiled she was, that she hadn't had to wait two hours as I had day before yesterday.  Of course, I took more pictures, just a few this time.

Grand again.

After that, I wasn't quite sure what to do with us, since I hadn't planned on an almost free afternoon.  So we wandered back to the cabin along the other part of the Geyser Hill boardwalk loop, and then L rested while I decided to take another stroll.  No pictures, really, just enjoying my last day at the Upper Geyser Basin.

As it turned out, this early in the season you don't have to have reservations to dine at the Old Faithful Inn, so we splurged on our last night in the park and ate trout and salad and rice.  It was delicious.  And I took another picture of the inside of the lobby as we were leaving.

Balconies inside the Inn.

It really is a most spectacular building.

And that was our last full day in the park, one week ago today.