Got up before dawn in order to check out Fan & Mortar. It was cold and dreary from the overcast smoke. Turns out that going down there wasn't the wrong thing to do. They had a strong event shortly after dawn, with some decent Upper Mortar activity at the end, but nothing really exciting.
From there, it was time to go to Grand. Castle started as we rounded the curve, the proceeded to go into one of its sloppy, pausing eruptions. It finally went into the major steam phase with one of the pauses well over four minutes.
Grand didn't make us wait, and it had a nice two burst eruption. The sun was red, but it nicely backlit the activity.
As we left Grand, we saw Penta splashing from the Top Vent. It was starting a steam phase eruption that lasted about ten minutes. Just as the activity died down, we got the call for Beehive's Indicator, so it was off to Geyser Hill. There was no wind, so once again it was a tall, impressive eruption. I didn't see any activity from the Base Vent. Also caught a secondary Lion eruption as I was leaving Geyser Hill.
In the afternoon we got another, weaker event down at Fan & Mortar, one that died down fast enough so that we were able to got back to see another two burst Grand eruption.
There was a third Fan & Mortar event in the evening, about the same strength as the previous two. Then at sunset, went out for a One Burst Grand. Rift was in eruption, but as it seems to do quite often, ended sometime during Grand. Sawmill was also in a long eruption during our entire wait.