Before I got checked in, I did get to see a nice Beehive from the overlook, and Castle had another minor eruption.
So when I headed out for the evening Grand eruption, the first thing I saw when I got out to the bikerack at Castle was Rift in eruption. By the time I got over there, it was obvious that West Triplet had been quiet for a bit. This gave the false hope that the end of Rift might be soon. While waiting, Sputnik was quite active, with some of the eruptions as much as 1 meter high.
About the same time it was noticed that there were a couple of bison to the north, near the boardwalk by Wave Spring. The slowly moseyed along and one of them settled down right next to the boardwalk near Shoe Spring. This did not deter visitors from using the walkway, getting close-up pictures of the bison, and in at least one case, stepping off the boardwalk to be part of a picture. The bison, fortunately, ignored them all.
When I passed through, I also noticed that the Sawmill Group had nice high water levels, and about 45 minutes later it was noticed that Penta was in a full eruption. With Rift still going, I took the opportunity to head down to see it between Turban eruptions.
That's when things got interesting. On the way back from my second visit, I saw Bulger start After about a minute or so, it had all the indications that this was going to be a major eruption. I hadn't seen any minors before that.
It was hard to tell with the lighting, but it seemed that the amount of steam in the hole had increased, and I thought I saw water. At 3 minutes into Bulger's eruption, it was obvious that the hole was full to about 15cm below the rim. The water stayed at that level for about 30 to 45 seconds, then dropped.
About 30 seconds after that, the hole refilled, and five minutes into the Bulger eruption, the water on the left side of the hole started bursting.
Bulger's Hole in eruption
The eruption lasted about 2 minutes. Most of the activity was forced through the small hole that has recently formed in the sinter shelf about the hole. Though there it seemed that there were thrown a number of rocks by the milky white water. The steam made it hard to tell what was going on inside the hole itself, but there were definite small bursts in the area where I first noticed the start of the eruption. Bulger itself continued to erupt for another 45 seconds or so, with a total eruption duration of 8m07s.
In the middle of all that, Turban started and was quickly followed by an eruption of Grand. While I missed the start of Turban and Vent and the end of Rift, we did get a nice second burst and an eruption of Daisy. Seemed like everything was erupting at once.
After that, I decided to stick around the Sawmill Group, to see if there might be more Bulger related activity, and to get a duration for Penta. During the second visit to Penta, I noticed that Spasmodic actually seemed higher than before, and wondered if this might be one of those very long Penta eruptions.
After 49 minutes, which seems short, Bulger had a another major eruption. Once again, after about 1.5 minutes the hole showed water for about 30-45 seconds, drained and refilled. This time though, there was no eruption.
But there was an eruption of Churn. Again, not surprising with the long Penta duration, which at this point had been erupting for about 90 minutes. All of the features in the Sawmill Group were high. Oval was having periodic pulsations, and Sawmill was bubbling nicely in a high pool.
There was a second Churn 27 minutes later, and about 4 minutes after a kind of false start where Churn bubbled and surge up to 0.5 meter for about 15 seconds.
By that time Penta had been erupting for over two hours. The bugs were starting to get nasty, and it had been a long day, and I decided that Penta could quit on its own, so I headed in.
At Penta before Grand I got to see the naturalist who seems to be this year's Dixy. There several people sitting along the boardwalk, with their feet on the old paving stones, watching the eruption, as we have all done at some time or another. He requested that they stop doing that. Next, he went on down to Grand, and seemed to be studiously avoiding notice of the bison to the north. Finally he couldn't ignore it any longer, and went up there to keep an eye on things.
After the Grand eruption, the bison were on the move again. Since the bison were wandering near the boardwalk, he kept herding all the people there toward Sawmill, instead of just waiting calmly for them to pass. The bison just followed their usual path at the base of the hillside. The last I saw of them they went behind Spasmodic and headed into that swamp. Dixy hung around for a while, then followed them toward Geyser Hill.