Monday July 30, 2007 Little Old Faithful Geyser In Calistoga, California
The other stop we made two weeks ago before Safari West, was to the Little Old Faithful Geyser in Calistoga, California.
In looking around for links for this post, I discovered a web page from Wayne Boyd that states:
"The proprietors claim this is one of only three 'Old Faithful Geysers' in the world, one being here in Calistoga, one being in Yellowstone in Wyoming, and the last being in New Zealand. A little bit of research on the Internet, however, revealed the proprietors of this spout are not telling the whole story. In a number of places where there is geothermal activity, wells have been drilled and fitted with impermeable casements that allow them to erupt like geysers. Though these so-called 'artificial geysers', technically known as 'erupting geothermal wells', are not true geysers, they can be quite spectacular."
It's not on the scale of the Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park (which you can see via webcam), but it was certainly entertaining enough for a small boy. Even though their web site says it (faithfully) erupts every 20-30 minutes, a hand-written sign on the wall had adjusted this to 30-40 minutes.
We paid to get in (dollar off if you bring your AAA card), and headed out to the back where the geyser was. One of the first things you see is an enclosure with Fainting Goats in it. This is another misnomer. The goats don't really faint. According to the Wikipedia page, they just have "external muscles which freeze for roughly 10 seconds when the goat is startled. Though painless, this generally results in the animal collapsing on its side." We didn't see any fits of auto-goat tipping while we were there (YouTube has a video though), so we carried on to the geyser area.
After a few minutes a 2-3 foot high jet of hot water erupted upwards. We thought "was that it"? Unsure, we went further back and looked at the llamas (that to me seemed to be on the point of thinking about spitting at you at any moment), then headed back again to the geyser area.
Our timing was perfect. It erupted just as we approached it.
This attraction, like the Petrified Forest is fun for kids for about 15-30 minutes. Then it's time to move on.
[Technorati Tag: Old Faithful]
( Jul 30 2007, 08:22:18 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]
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