Day 41: Geysers are so cool! (Colter Bay to Madison)

We woke up early to get ahead of the Yellowstone traffic, but Alix was too cold to ride further than the parking lot. (Out was legitimately cold outside!) So we grabbed a coffee, walked around a bit, and admired the view from the marina in Colter's Bay.

We got on the road after it had warmed up a bit and enjoyed a twisty ride along a river far below us. It turns out that Grand Teton roads are much better suited for cyclists than are Yellowstone's, so we spent an annoying amount of time being wary of traffic.

Essentially, all of our morning ride was uphill! We climbed over several small peaks before we finally got to ride downhill to our afternoon destination: the bike path to Lonestar Geyser. Our Warmshowers hosts from Newton, Kansas had just been to Yellowstone and had advised us that this was the geyser to see. We just had to be willing to wait for it to go off.

Unfortunately, the "bike path" to the geyser ended up being a bizarre combination of road surfaces - the path alternated randomly between asphalt, gravel, sand, and mud, with plenty of potholes thrown in for good measure. Oh well! At least we both have good tires (and 0 flats to prove it!). At the beginning of the path, people had scrawled the last times the geyser had gone off, in a very informal system of record keeping. We had been told that the geyser geysed approximately every three hours. A couple walking back down the trail told us the geyser had just gone off an hour before.

 Our "bike path" ended in a clearing by a river, with a large geyser cone in the center and several signs warning visitors about the thermal activity. It was quiet for the time being, so we relaxed in the shade, spread out our lunch, and waited.

It wasn't too long before the geyser started to spit and bubble (part of its extended pre-eruption performance). We chatted with two friends motorcycle-touring from Canada as we watched it warm up.

Despite a couple of substantial shows of steam and gurgling water, it wasn't until the predicted 3 hour interval that the geyser finally showed its true colors. In a fantastic eruption that lasted for 15 or 20 minutes, the geyser fountained an immense amount of sulphury water into the air. It was pretty darn cool. We must admit, it was cooler than we thought it would be. Definitely with the wait!

Lonestar Geyser in action

Luckily, while we were waiting we got to talk to a geyser enthusiast who answered our many questions about how geysers work. Apparently, geysers need silica to function, because it coats the tunnels underground, forming a watertight seal and allowing pressure to build. Some geysers go off less predictably than others because they are connected underground to other geysers. Geysers are somewhat of an "endangered species" of geological phenomena because any sort of drilling (even test drilling) nearby can extinguish them permanently. And, our enthusiast explained that Yellowstone sometimes has as many as 1000 active geysers in a year, making it the largest geyser field in the world. (The second largest is in Russia and much less publicly accessible.)

A geyser rainbow! Apparently this is a standard phenomenon near erupting geysers, which makes sense.

The steam at the tail end of the eruption

After the show was over, we biked back down the path, bought groceries, and rode 16 miles to an actual campground in Madison. The people working the entrance to the campground were still there, which meant that we paid for camping for the first time this whole trip! Truly a momentous occasion. We were very happy to 1) support the national park service, and 2) have a bear box conveniently located near our tent (this was the biggest impetus to paying for camping). It was a great experience, though - the staff charged Alix's phone at night and served us complimentary coffee in the morning from the staff break room. We also met another cyclist who had toured from Delaware, taking a roundabout route so as to travel by as many breweries as possible. Not a bad trip idea, we think!