17.05.2012 – 17.05.2012  13 °C

After a little sleep in we ate our brekky in the sunshine and headed out to see the OF area of the park. First stop, was to note down the major geyser times (2 of the geysers were due to go off in the next couple of hours) and another squiz at OF doing its thing! The OF basin is full of geysers (at least forty separate fountains). Some of them are quite small and do a merry little dance and some of them are huge and you can only imagine the qty of water that must spray out of them!! One of them (the Giant) is so inconsistent that it last spouted in 2010. Apparently when it goes off it rockets its water up greater than 250ft and the rumble is so strong and loud that you can hear it anywhere in the basin!! (Although I was wishing, the Giant didn’t do its thing today..) Next door to this big geyser were these smaller geysers that were spouting out of almost the same spot! When it went off, water was spraying everywhere, just like a sprinkler going crazy!!

We were hoping to see the Riverside geyser go off and unfortunately it decided to go 40 mins early today.. It’s a bit of a shame because when it does go off you can sometimes see a rainbow thru its spray.. (Although the clouds have come in today so probably wouldn’t have had that much luck..) That’s the luck though here at the OF basin.. unless you are willing to sit for hours “just in case” you can miss out on seeing the action!

We did manage to see the other geyser erupt today.. Daisy, went off almost exactly when the park rangers suggested she would! (Of course we got there early so we wouldn’t miss this one..) Daisy rocketed her water up to approx 70 feet. In doing so, she emptied out the water reservoir of the next door geyser!! It was quite something to see the water level drop rapidly as Daisy used it up into the sky. The water must be hot from these geysers as Daisy seemed to put up more steam than water.

After Daisy had done her thing we decided to have a break for lunch and have a little rest (as the other main geysers weren’t going off til late in the afternoon). Lunch was a hot tasty bowl of soup. After a small rest we hopped in the car to see the other geyser basins that ring OF, Black and Biscuit Sands. The Black sands geysers are so named because of black sand… I have to admit that the black sand has moved on and now they appear to be smaller versions of the OF basin geysers. Biscuit was similar and has lost its biscuit appearance due to a large earthquake 20 odd years ago. Imagine lots of hot pools with the occasional gush of water and you’ve got a picture of the two basins!!

Interesting fact about the colours of the hot spring pools (they normally accompany the geysers). The bluer the water the hotter the water. As the water cools, the edge of the pools will become more of a reddy/ orange colour. The colour is all determinant on the types of algae’s and organisms that live in the water.

The finale to our day was seeing the “Castle” geyser blow its top.. Both D and I sat in the cold windy air for over half an hour to see it happen and gosh it was worth it! The Castle is thought to be the oldest geyser in the OF basin and when it erupts it erupts for almost twenty minutes!!!! It is the geyser we could see yesterday erupting when we were watching OF and it puts OF to shame. The gushing of the water just went on and on and on. To the point where I put away my camera after taking shots from nearly every angle! The viewing position for the castle enables you to get really close to the geyser itself so D was actually able to go and have a wander thru the steam and water vapour.. to his detriment as he ended up quite wet! But how often can you run thru a steam jet from a geyser! (I didn’t take the plunge because I didn’t really want to get the camera soaked..)

We ended up leaving the Castle before it had even ended because during this arvo quite a large electrical storm had been brewing and it was just about to hit the park.. Not wanting to be totally saturated we did a runner back for the digs.

Song of the Day– Peter Gabriel, Steam