The Lower Geyser Basin Fountain Paint Pot area is the first geyser area you can visit coming from the north.
Trails are clearly marked and signs clearly indicate it is dangerous and illegal to go off the trail. My 2, 4, 6, and 8 year old children had no problem following these rules, but this guy managed to not only get off he trail, he did it in a crowd, over a railing, next to a geyser, on his butt. Congratulations “that guy!” If you ever read this, we would love to get your story behind it. Please contact us below.
This event happened on the far west part of the path by the three geysers at this location. If you follow the path clockwise, you will start with these geysers, then pass some fumaroles, leather pool, and start returning back walking by Fountain Paint Pots and finally Silex Spring.
We were lucky enough to see one of the geysers at the Lower Geyser Basin stop blow while we were at the site. Because this was the first geyser we really saw, we thought this one was awesome, but it was nothing compared to what was coming up further south.
This is Leather Pool:
It also had these fumaroles, which are basically really stinky holes.
Here are the mud pots:
Probably the prettiest part of this site was the silex spring:
As always, these springs seem to produce a large bacteria mat. Here’s a couple of pics from this one:
One last thing that was interesting here was the trees that are petrifying themselves by sucking up the minerals in their roots. We saw this at Artists Paint Pots as well, but here you can get up close.
This was a solid site to visit and a nice walk with an interesting variety of things to look at and is very accessible. We recommend taking a look at this site and making it part of a larger day of site seeing.
