Much more interesting day compared to yesterday.
Started with a One Burst Grand eruption on a Turban Delay. Immediately afterwards, got the call for activity in Main Vent at Fan & Mortar. On the way to the bikes, Castle started erupting. The first five minutes or so, Castle had multiple surges and quick pauses. Then, suddenly, it started to erupt continuously and steadily. It did this for the several more minutes we watched before heading north. Seemed obvious that this eruption was going into steam.
At Fan & Mortar, the sequence of activity leading up to an eruption progressed over the next hour. There were some huge surges from Main Vent while Bottom Vent was intermittently active. Finally everything died down until the Frying Pans started. At that point, Upper Mortar started to show signs of life. Fan also picked up in activity. Over the next few minutes, we started getting surging from Upper Mortar while Fan would die down, the pick up in intensity. Finally, one long surge in Upper Mortar set off the eruption. For a moment, at the very start, there were turquoise pools forming in Lower Mortar, Main Vent and East Vent before the jetting started. My video did not capture this, but others there saw the same activity. I don't remember seeing that sort of things before.
The wind was not cooperative with this eruption. It kept shifting so that the whole area got soaked at one time or another. At one point, I found that standing on the benches afforded a nice view of the activity people getting wet on both sides of me. Norris Pool also came up to its rim and had a heavy boil at the area closest to Fan.
Later on, went out to another One Burst Grand eruption. Unlike the activity of the last month, this time Turban initiated the activity without there being any sort of Turban Delay preceding. West Triplet also was active before Grand, and quit some time during the eruption.
After Grand, it seemed apparent that the Sawmill Group was finally out of a deep drain. I've noticed higher water levels before, along with quiet Slurp, but this was the first time the system looked like it was rising into actual overflow.
Over the next hour, Spasmodic did come to overflow, with the main pools fairly quiet. Tardy was near overflow, and Sawmill was high. Then Tardy started to have one to two second blips (technically eruptions) every 80 to 100 seconds, with overflow starting after a few of them. At one point, Sawmill had a splash to about 5 meters as if it was starting. It didn't, but this did raise the pool level by about 5cm. Finally, Tardy went into a strong overflow and began to erupt continuously. At this point, Sawmill was slightly in overflow. No water going down the runoff, but it was filling the catch basins that had been dry. With Tardy starting, Sawmill started to slowly drop.
In the other parts of the group, Oval was high, and at one time I thought I saw it have pulsations. Thumping Hole was high and behaving in what would be a "normal" fashion. Penta was high, and this got way too many people excited for no reason.
By the end of the hour, Spasmodic had dropped down to the point where it wasn't in overflow except when there was a small surge. Sawmill was back down to about the level it was before the splash.
At that point, the call for Beehive's Indicator called me away. It was a windy eruption, but the clouds parted momentarily while Beehive was still near full height, and there was a rainbow in the curtain of water crossing Geyser Hill.
Afterwards, Tardy was still in eruption as we went past toward Castle and the bikes. Sawmill was well out of sight, and Spasmodic was not in overflow. What does it mean? It appears that the Sawmill Group is still in the process of reverting to activity prior to Sawmill's dormancy, and that it is possible to make a full recovery.
One last One Burst Grand just before midnight, and just before the moon finally appeared. It seems like all the one burst Grand eruptions lately have been long, over eleven minutes. This one was just under nine, which was disappointing.