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Observations for 22 July 2013

Out at Grand the moon was high and it seemed like the humidity was low and the temperature high (for night, that is). Ended up arriving in time for a close to 28 minute Turban delay. The first of this type delay I've seen this trip. But fortunately, it resulted in only a two interval delay. As the time of the second Turban approached, I could see the steam getting heavier over Grand's pool, and then finally, about ten seconds before the start, could hear the boiling over Grand's vent.

The wind direction was perfect for a moonlit, nighttime eruption, toward Rift, instead of the usual direction toward the northwest. This allowed me to see a full arc moon bow in the spray coming off of Vent, a thin ribbon with a reddish cast.

Saw my first Fountain/Morning dual, and I must say I was unimpressed. It may be rare activity, but rare doesn't imply better. The primary reason is that Fountain's activity gets in the way of seeing what Morning is doing. The fact that it was a morning eruption didn't help, as both Morning and Fountain were shrouded in steam from all their overflow channels. But comparing it to the one I saw earlier under similar conditions, I'm much rather have the solo so I can see Morning's huge bursts, and not have their sound drowned out by the crashing surf going on in Fountain.

Another drawback was that it seemed like for minutes at a time, Morning was doing a "Big Oblong". Large, but steady boiling without any of the bursting for which Morning is known.

In some ways, the activity reminded me of the Daisy/Splendid duals of 1997. In that year, a majority of the eruptions I witnessed were dual eruptions, and one outstanding feature of most of those what that when Daisy started, Splendid quit. This was in contrast to the 1980s activity when Splendid would not only continue, but sometimes become huge and last longer than normal. So in 1997, it got to the point where I didn't want Daisy to erupt. (There were a few eruptions of the 1980s variety that year. Fortunately I managed to capture one in June on video.)

Finally, the ambiance of the area is perhaps the worst possible for viewing any geyser in the Park, and in that I include the ring around Old Faithful. You have a constant stream of people who have no idea what they are seeing, and don't care a bit about it,other than "it's rare", or taking a picture of themselves in front of something erupting. And then they move on. The walkway is too narrow, and coming apart, and that makes it hard to move around to try to take in different views of Morning's activity. Which on a steamy morning, is important. Add into this that I can no longer tolerate the yammering that goes on when a large group of gazers is at this sort of activity. A few in particular won't shut up, and keep talking about other, irrelevant things, adding to the drowning out of the sound of the eruption.

A middle of the day Grand had a short enough interval that it pretty much insured that the evening eruption would appear in the daylight.

As it turned out, Grand pretty much erupted at the earliest opportunity, at just over six hours. The only different feature of this eruption was that at the 17 minute mark, Grand's pool was completely full, ridges fully covered, but there were no waves. It took the better part of a minute for the waves to finally appear. With the short interval, Grand at least set itself up for another moonlight eruption, as tonight is the full moon.