July 2025
As a result of various volcanic activities millions of years ago, this region came to existence filled with hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, heat loving colorful micro-organisms called thermophiles, acids, minerals and gases. This park has to be explored on a sunny day to see the vibrant colors.
We had only one day to explore this park, and we had to pick and choose the spots we were exploring. We explore this park in July 2025. Let me take you through the spots I chose
Grand Prismatic Boardwalk and viewpoint
Grand Prismatic spring is the biggest and most colorful hot spring in the park. On the grand prismatic boardwalk you can see –
- Grand prismatic spring
- Excelsior Geyser
- Opal pool
- Turquoise pool
Grand prismatic view point:
There is a short hike to this viewpoint. You can see the boardwalk around the spring. The start of this hike is past the grand prismatic boardwalk area
On the way to grand prismatic view point there are few hot springs
Grand prismatic boardwalk
Start of the broadwalk to grand prismatic
Excelsior Geyser:
First one on the boardwalk is Excelsior Geyser. Its dormant since 1985, pumps 4000 gallons of boiling water per min into the Firehole river
Short video of Excelsior Geyser:
Grand Prismatic Spring
Temperature of the spring goes to 70 degrees. The colors around the spring is from layers of thermophiles. There is a small hike to go to the viewpoint to see the spring in its entirety.
The orange color is from the layers of thermophiles.
short video of Grand Prismatic Spring
Opal pool
Turquoise pool
Fountain paint pot trail
Fountain paint pot trail in Yellowstone is a short boardwalk loop that covers a lot of hydrothermal features.
- Geysers:
- Clepsydra geyser erupts very often and we were able to see the eruption
- Fountain geyser – erupts approx. every 5 hrs., we couldn’t see it
- Morning geyser – erupts once in few years
- Jet geyser: erupts very often and is so fun to watch this one
- Mud pots
- Fumaroles
- Celestine Pool
- Silex spring
Silex Spring
Mud Pots
Fountain paint pot aka mud pot is an area of boiling clay and sulphuric acid. You can hear the gobbly sound of boiling clay
Hear the gobbly sound in this short video:
Fumaroles
see the fumaroles in action :
Another Spring
Jet Geyser
Clepsydra geyser
Watch the steaming Jet and Clepsydra Geyser :
Fountain and morning geyser
They both were all calm and quiet
Celestine pool
The boardwalk near Clepsydra, Jet, Fountain and Morning geysers
Old Faithful Geyser
The most majestic geyser in Yellowstone. Rangers can accurately predict its eruption time and the name is due to its consistency in the eruptions. Erupts every 2 hours approximately. Reaches a height of 130ft on an average. Temperature of the water is around 75C. Eruption lasted for about 4 mins
Mammoth basin
Mammoth basin is the north side of the park. It was a pretty long drive, but we decided to do it and was able to explore a bit right before the sunset. This drive also gave us opportunity to see the Bisons roaming around at dusk
Mammoth basin upper terrace at Yellowstone National Park is filled with limestone deposit terraces. Cupid spring, canary spring, angel spring are a few that we saw. I think I missed the lower basin which seems more beautiful, but we ran out of time and light.
A few other springs/terrace:
Short video of Mammoth basin upper Terrance and roaring mountain fumarole:
The Bisons
We saw them on the drive between mammoth basin and west Yellowstone around 9pm. People say it’s very easy to spot Bisons at Yellowstone but we were so disappointed the whole day and finally on our way out of the park we were able to spot them.
See the Bisons in action:
A bit of West Yellowstone town
Video of Drive between west Yellowstone and north Yellowstone. North Yellowstone is entirely different landscape: