The Grand Prismatic Spring is the signature of Yellowstone National Park. It is the largest hot spring in the park with beautiful colored ring within the pool. The pool is filled with the colors of a rainbow, which makes it look so spectacular. Grand Prismatic Spring is located on the Southeast side of Yellowstone National Park and with an overlook on the mountain on the South side.
The parking lot at Grand Prismatic Spring is super small. You can choose to get there super early in the morning but there is a problem. In the early morning the air is cold, and thus a lot of steam will be coming out of Grand Prismatic Spring and thus you will not be able to see much. The color will not be as bright in the early morning either.
If you wait till noon, the steam will be mostly gone but there will be no parking space available. Most people have to park on the side of the road and walk to Grand Prismatic Spring. Some people actually have to park super far due to the amount of crowd.
We chose to visit Grand Prismatic Spring in late afternoon. The temperature is hot and sun is bright. There was less crowd but we still had to park the car on the side of the road. It was not too far from the trail however.
The trail is on the board walk that goes around the spring. Before reaching Grand Prismatic Spring, we could see the hot spring water flowing down into the river. The rocky side of the river has this orange glow color. As we walked further, we came to this other hot spring which was also huge. There was a lot of steam coming out of it and seemed to be hotter than Grand Prismatic Spring.
When we got to Grand Prismatic Spring, it was less of a wow because it was difficult to see the whole thing from the ground. All the pictures that we have seen was taken by the drone from above. We could see various color of the spring, but we could only barely see the surface of it.
When we were there, we also saw a Black Labrador there who was extremely excited.
Since we didn't have a proper view of Grand Prismatic Spring, we decided to head to the overlook. The trail to the overlook starts at Fairy Falls parking lot. When we got there, there weren't that many cars and there were parking spaces available at overflow parking. The distance to the overlook was only about 0.8 miles with some elevation gain.
When we got there, there were already quite a lot of people there taking photos. The view from the overlook was much better and we could see the entire Grand Prismatic Spring. It was gorgeous. We really enjoyed the view.
Overall, it was a great place to visit but the board walk around Grand Prismatic Spring was less interesting. We recommend to visit in late afternoon to avoid the crowd and be able to have the best view of Grand Prismatic Spring.
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