Old Faithful Inn

 Many years, as Trish and I travel to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, we come by way of Yellowstone National Park. Since we have been before and will surely come again, we have learned to focus on a single area of the Park instead of trying to do everything.

This year we decided to stay at the Old Faithful Inn, a destination in itself, at the Old Faithful Geyser Basin.

The Old Faithful Inn was built during the winter of 1902-03 and opened in June of 1903.  It is built of local materials, mainly Lodge Pole Pine and lava flow rocks.  The woodwork is amazing.  

When we arrived there was a whole bus load of Amish tourists at the Inn.  The men, experienced barn raisers themselves, were almost hypnotized as they stared and stared and even seemed to measure the internal structure of the Inn.

We stayed in one of the historic rooms right in the Inn.  The room was small and had no bathroom.  There was a sink, but the bath and shower room was shared and down the hallway.  This was quite a luxury in 1903: a steam heated room with indoor plumbing!  We loved it!  Back in the days when the Inn was new, the only way to get here was to take the train to Gardner, Wyoming, then take a stagecoach fifty miles down through the park.

The gigantic fireplace in the “living room” of the inn goes up more than five stories and weighs five tons.  It, and the entire foundation of the inn, is made of lava-flow rock sourced about a mile from the Inn.

In the Yellowstone fires of 1988, fire almost destroyed the Inn. 300 firefighters volunteered to stay behind and fight to save this building.  At the last minute, rain and a shift in wind rescued the Inn.  

One of our favorite places here is the observation porch. Located on the front of the Inn, the porch overlooks the Geyser Basin and faces Old Faithful as it erupts every ninety-one (plus or minus thirteen!) minutes!