Mystic Falls and Biscuit Basin

Mystic Falls was our destination today - what a great name! First of all we went around the hot springs and geysers in Biscuit Basin, then up we went about a thousand feet to the top of the waterfall. The waterfall was very pleasant and did everything that a waterfall is supposed to do, however the really amazing thing about the walk was the view southwards of the upper geyser valley - we could see the plumes of a line of about ten geysers along the valley with Old Faithful at the end - it must be a fault line with the geysers all connected. The walk had quite a lot of mosquitos which I kept having to slap off my arms, but more pleasantly there were lots of really cute chipmunks and squirrels. 

James and Davie decided to walk the.couple of miles to Old Faithful while I drove along and got myself a cup of coffee which I drank while reading my book in the lobby of the Old Faithful Lodge.

These old Yellowstone resorts, Old Faithful and Lake, used to have no middle range of accommodation between the posh hotels and camping. So to make the park more accessible to people who were neither very rich nor very hardy, big lodges were built with lots of cabins around them in the woods, in the early 1900s. This made, and still does make, Yellowstone National Park accessible to a wide range of people from all over America, which I think is a really good thing. On the other hand, I do think that a lot of the accommodation could do with some extensive refurbishment or even rebuilding, which is currently underway in the Canyon area. The is nothing wrong with the accommodation, it's perfectly clean, but it looks kind of tired and needs updated. That's just my opinion, for all I know the people of America like it just the way it is because it is traditional.