As we have a short hike to our next camp site we take it slow this morning just enjoying the sun by lake and chatting. We are now a party of 5 and it seems like a holiday with friends.

Our trail heads through a thermal area with a hot pool area marked in the creek that is too good to pass up. We hike for about 40 mins and find the hot pool. John and Gavin join us for a few hours soaking in a ring of rocks someone else has left in the stream. It is a delicate balance of mixing the near boiling water flowing out of the ground with the cold water coming down the stream to get a pool of exactly the right temperature. At first we don’t have the technique worked out and we have waves of cold followed by scalding water in our pool. Soon however we figure out that by keeping our legs moving and mixing the water we can have the perfect temperature.

It is hard to leave our pool as the sun is out and the water is good but we want to see the lone star geyser which is just past tonights campsite. We hike to our campsite, OA2, set up our tents and then pack our dinner and hike on to the Geyser. We had run into some people earlier in the day that had seen it erupt so we knew the approximate time that it would go off again. We sat on the grass and prepared our dinner waiting for the big event. Just as we finished cleaning up dinner the geyser started erupting. Lone star erupts for a long time, about 30 mins and puts on a good show that makes the extra hike worthwhile.

We headed back to camp and light a camp fire. We have the camp fire keeping us warm and we are surrounded by several hot a steaming thermal pools, it is a eerily beautiful spot. We are eventually driven to bed by mosquitoes which even smoke from our fire could not drive away.