Yellowstone National Park (2) Geysers!

One of the unique features in Yellowstone is geysers. Geysers are handsome and chasing them is fun. In the park visitor centers as well as the national park app, you can find the prediction time of Geysers daily. Old Faithful is famous because it is predictable and erupts every 90 minutes or so. Grand Geyser is the world’s tallest predictable fountain geyser; but it erupts only once a day. Because we only can predict it around +/-135 minutes, you will need to prepare 4-5 hours to surely see it 🙂 We were trying our luck and went around the predicted time, but the geyser already went 🙁

Geysers are mainly located at Lower/Midway/Upper Geyser basins on the bottom loop of the YellowStone, as well as the Norris Geyser basin on the top loop of Yellowstone. Lower Geyser basin has many small and colorful pots and geysers. It is a good stroll on the boardwalk.

The Midway Geyser basin has the most famous “Grand Prismatic Spring”. Whenever we pass it, the parking is spilled on the road. It deserves its own special blog post. The Upper Geyser basin is located near the Old Faithful visitor center. There are food and lodge too. People gathered in and outside the visitor center and wait for Old Faithful to erupt. The eruption lasts a few minutes.

After watching the eruption of the old faithful, everyone in my family was tired and walked back to the van. I was still in a high spirit, roaming around in the little museum in the visitor center and reading about how geysers are formed and where else have this geological feature. It was around 5:45pm and the visitor center was about to close. Suddenly, the speaker in the visitor center started broadcasting that the Beehive Geyser was going off. I had no idea how big it is, so I ran over for a lot. Later I learned that Beehive Geyser is not predictable and it does not go off every often. I was just so lucky 🙂 The eruption lasts quite a long time and my family was circling around the visitor center to look for me, “where were you, mommy? I cannot find you in the visitor center!” “Oh, sorry, I did not know Beehive was going to erupt so I did not tell you. There were no phone signals in the park.”

One of the best feelings must be luck fell on you unexpectedly.

In Norris Geyser basin, there is this famous Steamboat Geyser. It is active, unpredictable and infrequent. Its last eruption went off Feb 27, 2026, a random evening at 7pm. It went 300-400 feet high and is the world tallest active geyser.

Geysers make this national park playful. Such an amazing world to interact with!