The plan for today was to get up at 7 am, leave by 8am, and arrive at the Steel Bridge Parking at about 9 am to hike to the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook and Fairy Falls. John stayed up until about 1 am culling and processing photos and writing up the article from yesterday. He did not quite make it up at 7 am. Fortunately, Kate woke him back up at 7:20 am, and he crawled reluctantly out of bed.

Despite the late start, we made it to the Steel Bridge Parking area at 9 am, and it was already nearly full. Kate missed the first turn into the parking area because a large trunk was taking up the entire road waiting to get out. (We have noticed a significant number of Yellowstone visitors are rude, selfish, and/or plain stupid.) We pulled into the other entrance, where cars were blocking the parking lot waiting for someone to pull out. Kate pulled a Dukes of Hazard turn to get back to the first entrance to parking area.

There is actually a steel bridge across the Firehole River at the parking area. It does not look all that safe. We definitely would not want to drive across it. The bridge connects the parking lot to a gravel trail that is multi-purpose for hiking and biking that takes you to the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook Trail and Fairy Falls Junction. It keeps going on for another 3 miles to Fountain Flats Drive. The name of the trail seems to vary depending on what you read. At the steel bridge, the path seems to be Fairy Falls Trail.

The river and steel bridge attracts birds. John was trying to take a picture of a tree swallow on the bridge, when another bird landed carrying an insect. He switched birds, but he missed the picture … mostly. Notice anything odd in the picture below?

No, the bird is not throwing itself off the bridge to its death. The picture was taken just after it jumped off, but before it spread its wings. You can even see the bug in its mouth. After this, John took pictures of (another?) female Mountain Bluebird and a Tree Swallow on the steel bridge. Apparently, the Tree Swallow found something interesting up in the sky.

We saw another Tree Swallow, on top of a dead tree, and two large white birds. We could not tell what they were due to the distance, but they seemed too small to be Ospreys. Want to guess what they were? (Hint: Ospreys)

The path to the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook Trail ran through a flat meadow and barren hot spring run off along the base of a hill. We thought the plume of steam on the horizon was Grand Prismatic Spring, but it was behind it. It is probably from the Excelsior Geyser Crater.

The overlook trail rises over 100 feet over the path to a concrete platform overlooking the spring. The trail and platform were not present the last two times that John visited. It was opened in 2017 to create a safer more sustainable path to view the spring versus people stomping through the underbrush. (Remember: plain stupid) The platform already had about 25 people on it. Sadly, trees have grown up and partly obscured the view. Also, Grand Prismatic Spring was giving off a little mist that was obscuring the view.

We went down the other side of the overlook to get back to the path. The Fairy Falls Trailhead was about another 0.5 miles down the path. To get the Fairy Falls, we walked through a young Lodgepole pine forest, which was young because the old trees burned down. The National Park Service now understands that this is just a normal part of the life cycle in Yellowstone.

We saw various butterflies on the wild flowers along the trail, including Tiger Swallowtail butterflies. They landed, so we do not know if they were Eastern, Western, or Two-tailed. We saw plenty of tree squirrels and chipmunks.

And even a dragon fly or two. It appears to be a Common Whitetail Dragonfly.

The falls were impressive 200 feet tall with a thin stream of water arching over the edge. It would have been prettier without all the people sitting at the bottom feeding the chipmunks and ground squirrels. (Remember: plain stupid) Yellowstone is far more enjoyable from the middle of May to the middle of June. Starting around the middle of June, there are just too many people.

We hiked back to the path and the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook. There were about 40 people trying to get pictures. Rather than wait in line, they would just push in from the side. (Remember: rude) We do not consider ourselves racist, but most of the people doing this appeared to be Asian. It might just be normal in their society, due to the over-crowding in many places. These pictures of the spring turned out better.

On the walk back, we saw a bird that we did not recognize. John caught him flying away from the branch, but there are not enough distinguishing marks to identify the species.

We made it back to the parking area tired, but we had completed our mission. We headed back home around the South end of the park. Not surprisingly, we ran into an animal jam. Kate asked what it was, and John said that he thought it was a Moose. A few days earlier, Kate had given up on seeing a Moose at Yellowstone,; we ended up parked on the side of the road in 0.25 seconds flat. It turned out to be a mother and baby moose.

You can see how small the baby moose is compared to the mother; the baby moose must be pretty young.

It was difficult to get good pictures of them due to the trees in the way and the tourist crowding in to get a look. Unfortunately, Kate ran out of storage on her phone, so she could not get the picture of the calf looking at her.

Sadly, some chump gunned his big diesel truck engine to get out of the animal jam. The diesel roar scared away the Moose and calf. (Remember: selfish)

We made it home without further incident.