Midway Geyser Basin

This is the first view of the Midway Geyser Basin features. Seen from the parking area, you can see the steam from the Excelsior Geyser. The runoff from the crater into the Firehole River is about 4000 gallons per minute. In comparison, it would take Old Faithful almost 2 months to generate the output of Excelsior in 1 day.

The big draw at Midway is the Grand Prismatic Spring. At 250 x 350 feet, the Grand Prismatic is the largest hot water spring in the U.S. As a result, it's difficult to photograph the entire thing unless you're overhead. In these pictures, you can see the blue spring in the background and the bacterial mats in the foreground.

These pictures show the beautifully pigmented bacteria in the microbial mats that grow around the edges of the mineral-rich water. In the summer, the mats tend to be these beautiful orange and red colors.

Pretty cool, but we can hardly wait to get to the infamous Old Faithful!