Observations for 28 June
Thanks to Grand once again deciding to have a long interval when it could instead have erupted by moonlight, I got to see that Grotto was still in its marathon eruption when I left at 04:30. Which, it turns out, was just about the time it shut down. Grotto was off and dead by 05:20. So once again, the Bijou Monkey Cage would be filling mid-morning and overflowing by noon. Grand had a consecutive long interval, and despite the breeze, it was a hot wait there.
Had already decided earlier in the week that if a Giant hot period started while I was at Grand, I was not going to race down to the Cage with the rest of the herd, but stay there and, should it actually erupt, try and get some photos, and get to see what it looks like from there. Today I got my chance. Unfortunately, some of the pictures were blurred because I was in such a hurry and the camera is so slow to respond. As with last week, the time between the start of Mastiff's surging turning into actual jetting until the start of Giant seemed to last forever, despite it being just a bit under two minutes.
I do sort of wish that the circumstances of the two eruptions, this one and last week's, were reversed, as I'd really have liked to have heard just how high this one was. It was definitely larger that earlier, but by how much? (Maybe someday, instead of immediately yakking into their cell phones from within the Monkey Cage every time, some people can put the effort into seeing and recording eruptions from other locations like I've tried to do. And I do resent, just a bit, how a number of geyser groupies just assumed I'd be measuring this height like last time.)