New Old Faithful Education & Visitor Center

On our way to see the new visitor center at Old Faithful, we could see what appeared to be a new mountain; actually, it was the smoke from the Antelope Fire.
A bull elk watches over his harem.

One last stop before the visitor center was the Firehole swimming area. Very popular in the summer, there were only a few here today even though it was a nice warm day in the 70s.

The Firehole is warmed by the runoff of distant hot springs and geysers.

Marlon couldn't resist taking this picture of the sun while here.

We finally made it to the NEW Old Faithful Education and Visitor Center which opened on August 25th.

Looks like snow on the roof already. Nope, just a design to make it look that way.

The 26,000 square foot building's price tag was $27 million, funded by both public and private sources.

The large windows provide a direct view of Old Faithful, which will be quite nice when winter arrives.

The building is filled with many different interactive displays providing information about all the natural features and wildlife of the park.

Here at Yellowstone, there are more hot springs and geysers than the rest of the world combined.

In the Young Scientist area geared to kids, you can watch a working model of a geyser build up pressure and erupt.

Here's a view of the new building from the walkway to Old Faithful.

The Old Faithful Observation Point can be reached via a moderate 1/2 mile hike ascending 200 feet above the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. We made it to the top with time to spare.

Doug decides not to get scalded by following the boardwalk since a small geyser was continuously erupting and landing on the walkway.

By the time we finished walking about the Old Faithful Geyser Basin it was getting late. Here's the visitor center at night.

For more pictures, click here or flip through the entire album below by clicking on the small pictures on the right.

To be continued...