The week following the Boulder Ironman we agreed to take it easy and opted out of a backcountry trip. Instead we stretched our muscles with a few runs around the geyser basin and a bike ride up to the continental divide at Isa Lake. We also went on a few shorter hikes around the Old Faithful area to see some of our favorite sites and check out some new places. There were more late nights than early mornings and we considered ourselves to be quite lazy as we mulled around the park watching the sunsets.

We did quite a bit of geyser gazing while staying off the backcountry trails. We watched Grand Geyser go off a few times as it has become one of our favorite geysers in the park. Grand Geyser is in the Upper Geyser Basin along the boardwalk that skirts in front of the hill. Grand Geyser only erupts every 6–8 hours and has an intricate relationship with Turban geyser, which is directly adjacent to it. Turban will erupt every 20-minutes, but Grand Geyser’s eruption is imminent only if the water in its pool does not drop right before a Turban eruption. Grand Geyser truly is a sight to see with burst of water rocketing up to 200ft into the air for 15-minutes or more. If you’re really lucky Grand will only settle for a few seconds before exploding into an encore performance. We also had the opportunity to witness some eruptions for the first time, like Spa Geyser, as well as some old favorites, like Riverside.

A few times we woke up in the middle of the night to walk the geyser basins and take some photos. Luckily, we caught a few clear nights along with new moon conditions allowing the Milky Way to streak across the night’s sky above us. The first night we walked around the Upper Geyser Basin getting pictures of an erupting Old Faithful and Grand Geyser. The second night we took pictures of the moon setting over Great Fountain Geyser, and eruptions of White Dome Geyser with the Aurora Borealis streaking the sky of the Firehole Lake Area.

We also went on some shorter hikes in the Old Faithful area of the park. A new trail we tried was DeLacy Creek Trail to Shoshone Lake, the largest backcountry lake in the Lower 48. We had previously canoed to Shoshone Lake from Louis Lake and hiked the 12-miles from Lone Star Geyser to the Shoshone Geyser Basin on the lakeshore, but this trail is much flatter and only 3-miles long. Once on the lake we found a nice beach to relax on while grabbing a snack and a few rays of sun. We did come across a few people along the trail but once we got to the beach we were all alone to enjoy the solitude of our minimal effort.

An old favorite of ours is the popular hike down the Fairy Falls Trail. The trailhead is an overcrowded nightmare, but we quickly left the masses behind as we continued on to Imperial Geyser. We love this area because it is one of the locations you can see the thermal features of the park without the unnatural sites of boardwalks. You can also ascend the hill behind Grand Prismatic Spring to get a unique birds-eye-view into one of the world’s largest hot springs

During the heat wave last week we headed out to Sentinel Meadows to find a place to take a dip in the Firehole River. The Firehole River cuts right through all three geyser basins in the Old Faithful region. As the river descends from the mountain tops it collects the runoff water from the thermal features; as a result the water is near 80-degrees by early summer. We headed off-trail until we found a private area near a thermal entrance to the river. Although it is not only illegal but also highly dangerous to directly enter any thermal feature in the park you are free to enjoy the warm spring water as soon as it mixes with a non-thermal river or lake. Even though we were less than a mile from the parking area we only saw one other person while we soaked.

After a dip we wanted to find another off-trail landmark in the park. The Queens Laundry Bathhouse is visible, if you know where you’re looking, from the Sentinel Meadows trail and less than 3-miles from the road. This abandoned structure is the oldest extant visitor structure in the National Park System. Construction of the bathhouse was started in 1881 but it was never finished, as there was a change in the leadership in the park at this time. Getting to the bathhouse is not physically challenging but the marsh and resident deer and horseflies that surround the site make travel unpleasant — at one point Erica was swarmed by 30 or more flies in a scene that looked like the apocalypse.

Although we steered clear of the deep backcountry we were still able to escape the crowds and take in some of the more unique places in Yellowstone. We enjoyed the downtime, but 20-mile days and journeys under pack into the more remote areas of the park continue to call to us.