Part 6

Day 7, continued

July 9, still. From the Old Faithful area we walked past Morning Glory pool towards Biscuit Basin. It's a less-travelled path, and it has a bunch of unmarked but beautiful springs. Morning Glory used to be entirely blue all the way to the edges until people threw stuff into it and blocked it up. (If you do that, fully knowing what it does, you go to hell. By the way.) Some of the pools we saw on the walk were blue like Morning Glory used to be, I imagine. I tried to capture the blue in a picture (hard to do for so many reasons, not the least of which was a LOT of steam):

From there it was to lunch. Which I only mention because people had put logs between trees to make a see-saw. The kids had a great time:

And on to Midway Geyser Basin, the home of Grand Prismatic Spring. This is an arial view of the 300-foot pool:

You can see the walkway in the picture. That's where we were! Yellowstone is amazing.

A cool thing about Midway: The springs run-off into the river and create a section of water that's warmer than water in your pool. Very cool. No, we didn't wade in it. But we COULD have, and that's the important part.

Highlights:

1. As we were walking towards the trail, we saw a bison going poop. The kids thought that was hilarious, and Teancom kept saying, "It was an ANimal. It was POOPING!" And now I can say that I know the consistency of buffalo poop. A moment to treasure.

2. The bird fight!!! Teancom spotted a bird in the air. He actually has really good eye sight and is observant, so I've learned to trust him when he sees things, even if I don't quite "believe" it. (You know, like "Teancom, there is NOT a snake in the garage. ... Oh. There is. Sorry for not believing you.") So he spotted a bird. And not just any bird, a bald eagle!! We took a picture of the eagle, which was right over our heads.

And then it got better! An osprey started attacking the eagle! It was AWESOME. The osprey would climb higher into the sky and then swoop down on the eagle. Right as the osprey would reach the eagle, the eagle would flip in the air to defend himself with his talons. We watched this happen again and again until the bald eagle got tired of it and flew off.

Apprently it was the osprey's territory, because we saw the osprey later, hovering in the same spot. He even dove towards the river, like he was fishing, but Mom says he pulled up just a few feet from the water.