Firehole Drive

Firehole Drive is a short one way road. It's entrance can be found between Lower Geyser Basin and Midway Geyser Basin off of the park Loop Road.

The first feature you will encounter on the drive is Firehole Spring. It is a small steaming pool by the side of the road. We stopped to take a look, because we stop for every thing! I am enthusiastic about this park....

The main attraction along Firehole Drive is the Great Fountain Geyser. This powerful geyser can shoot off huge plumes of water. The visitor center at Old Faithful posts predicted times for each eruption. Unfortunately, the predicted times are spaced 12 hours apart, and there is a window of plus or minus 2 hours in the accuracy of prediction. On the day we visited, the rangers had predicted a 1 PM eruption, but that meant an eruption could occur any time between 11 AM and 3 PM. To make matters worse, no one was around at 1 AM the night before to see if Great Fountain Geyser was on track then - if it had been early or late the previous night, then the 12 hour window would have to shift by a corresponding amount. Since it was too hard to guess when an eruption might occur, we decided to simply drive by at the 1 PM time, and not stop to wait.

We are very lucky individuals. As you can see from these photos, Great Fountain did erupt as we were standing there! You can tell en eruption is imminent by the water level. Look at how low the water level is in my first picture.

This is a terrific shot of Great Fountain in all it's glory. Do you see the white rock in the background on the left side? That is White Dome Geyser. Guess what happened next...

Does activity in Great Fountain trigger White Dome geyser? Are they linked underground some how? It wouldn't surprise me. These two may often go off together. Or perhaps it is complete coincidence that White Dome happened to also erupt as we were admiring Great Fountain. Maybe we are just double lucky individuals. This picture is the best photo I have of White Dome erupting - my camera's zoom lens isn't too awesome. Still, it was very exciting to see this eruption

By the time we drove over to White Dome, it's eruption had ceased, though Great Fountain continue to put on a display. This is the White Dome cone viewed up close.

After White Dome Geyser, Firehole Drive takes you out beside Hot Lake. There are some other geothermal features here - they have built a short boardwalk that you walk along.

The exit of Firehole Drive is right at the Fountain Paint Pots parking area. So naturally, we went there next.