Old Faithful Education

On the afternoon of June 8, 2012 Amy and I arrived in Yellowstone National Park and drove to Old Faithful Inn where I had managed to snag reservations for one night in the oldest part of the building.  There will be more about that in another post--but it was an amazing place to stay!  After we checked in we decided to make the most of the season's abundant daylight and explore the area of the upper geyser basin on foot.

One of the first things we saw was the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center.  [Random note, did you catch the palindrome in the last sentence?]

It is a fairly new building--well new to me.  The last time I was in Yellowstone was 1997, fifteen years ago.  So anything that is new since then is considered new in my book--and this one did open only a couple years ago.  The stamp I got in my passport book all those years ago doesn't actually exist any more.  I just discovered that you can virtually visit this center on-line, so check it out at this link.

Yellowstone’s hydrothermal features have always fascinated park visitors. The “curiosities” of the area—the geysers and other hydrothermal wonders—spurred further exploration and led to the eventual protection of Yellowstone as the world’s first national park. Today these natural wonders draw approximately three million visitors to the park each year. 

The new Old Faithful Visitor Education Center, opened Aug. 25, 2010, and tells the story of Yellowstone’s hydrothermal wonders.--from the NPS Old Faithful Virtual Visitor Center

There were a good number of exhibits inside, but it is important to remember that Yellowstone itself is the main exhibit, so visitor centers only supplement what you can experience outside.

Did you realize that Yellowstone (most of the park anyway) sits in the cone of a massive not-completely-extinct volcano?  It has erupted several times in the past (since the Flood on a Creationist timeline) and that ash traveled quite a way away from the area.  Compare it with the Mount St. Helen's eruption on the above map.

I knew that I lived in an earthquake prone area in California--but Yellowstone experiences many earthquakes as well!  They're actually good for the geothermal features (for the most part).  While they do occasionally shut down existing features they also serve to keep the "pipes" running by jarring lose obstructions.  Because of the sensitive nature of these systems the park doesn't allow any utilizing of the energy inherent in geothermal systems.  In other places (New Zealand and Iceland for example) it has been observed that messing with the system often causes unforeseen reactions.  Nobody wants to be responsible for Old Faithful shutting down!

There are several fairly common types of rocks native to the Yellowstone area due to the massive amount of geothermal activity.

We saw quite a few of these "bobby socks" trees as we traveled around the park.

This may only be a model, but it did give us a good preview of many of the features that we would see during our trip around the park.  I lost count of how many hot water pools and geothermal features that we saw.


One of the amazing things about all of the features is the sheer number of bacteria that live in the often boiling hot waters!

Amy and I each picked up one of these fascinating free lenticular bookmarks.  As you angle the bookmark you can see an eruption of Old Faithful.  I picked up plenty of guides and purchased many postcards.  I like to have all the information I can about an area--and I want to be prepared for the next time that we visit Yellowstone.

This chunk of rock is a remnant from the explosion of Porkchop Geyser in 1989.  The visitor center was great to visit--and if I recall correctly we even stuck around for a special ranger presentation about travel in Yellowstone in the early 1900s--but I don't remember if I recorded any of the presentation.

~Matt

PS The above pictures and a couple more are in this album: