Great Fountain Geyser and forest fire smoke, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

This is a photo of the Great Fountain Geyser along the Firehole Lake Drive in Yellowstone National Park. This was taken on August 15, 2016 while a forest fire was raging on the horizon.  The smoke extends from the setting sun to the upper right corner.

Great Fountain Geyser is one of the geysers that the rangers can predict when it will erupt, but the window of time that it might erupt is plus or minus two hours. When it's building toward an eruption, the vent and surrounding terraces will fill with water to overflowing and the column of water will shoot up out of the pooling water, as opposed to geysers like Old Faithful Geyser that erupt out of a cone.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Steamboat Geyser at night, Norris Geyer Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

This is a shot of Steamboat Geyser in the middle of the night.  Steamboat Geyser is the world's tallest active geyser and starting in the spring of 2018, it has entered a very active phase where the interval between eruptions is averaging about a week or so.

We went to Yellowstone at the end of July to early August 2019 to try to see a major eruption of Steamboat.  This photo was taken during the night of July 29th to July 30th while we waited overnight to make sure we didn't miss seeing it erupt.

Steamboat Geyser is in the Norris Geyser Basin in the northwestern central part of Yellowstone National Park.  This basin is considered to be the hottest and most acidic of Yellowstone's thermal basins.

While we waited overnight, Steamboat just steamed away and splashed water out once in a while, but didn't erupt that night.  However, our waiting did pay off after the sun rose, since it finally did erupt at 7:20 AM on July 30th. It continued erupting for much of the day, but we left after two hours and it was still going strong.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.