The Yellowstone Park season is from June 15th to September 15th. It is not necessary to suggest what shall be seen here, for the trips are all arranged for one, and none should leave without making the complete tour. This park is unlike any other; it is unique in many ways. It contains geysers, mud volcanoes, mineral springs, and the most gloriously coloured pools. The Yellowstone Canyon can be compared with no other; here we have a riot of colour, said by many to rival the colours of the Grand Canyon, really so entirely different as to make comparison impossible. The walls of the Yellowstone Canyon are divided by a space of many miles at the top, which narrows down to three quarters of a mile at the base, where the foaming waters dash between them, and here the fragments of all the lost rainbows seem to have been collected.
There are many fine mountain peaks, the finest being Mount Washburn, which has an elevation of 10,346 feet, named for General Washburn, the head of the Washburn-Doane exploration party, who first climbed it in 1870. From here one gets the only view of the park as a whole. I have never forgotten a remark which I heard John Muir make about this spot; he said: “When you go to the Yellowstone Park do not leave it under any consideration until you have been taken up Mount Washburn, and when you reach the top of the mountain refuse to come down until you have passed a night on the summit; never mind about sleep; remember that there will come a time when you will take a long enough sleep to make up for all you can ever lose; this will be a sublime experience.”
Words cannot tell of the impressiveness of the geysers. One may sit comfortably on the veranda of Old Faithful Inn and watch one eruption after another, repeated endlessly. But with every change of light, early morning, noontide, at sunset, or by moonlight, they are seen with new interest, and on the moonless nights the visitors are called to see some of these great spouts with the rays of a powerful searchlight upon them.
Old Faithful, which is described as the most perfect illustration of geyseric phenomena and whose curious fascination and real beauty cannot be described, plays every 85 minutes to a height of 125 to 150 feet, the eruptions lasting about five minutes.