Joyfully Retired

Today is the day I share with you one of the place we’ve visited in our travels. It’s one we call a Favorite Place. Today it’s Old Faithful — Old Faithful, California, that is.

This Old Faithful is located a couple miles outside the little town

of Calistoga. That’s in the northern part of Napa Valley, California.

According to the literature, the geyser erupts, on average, every

30 minutes. They’ve found that it’s a pretty good predictor of earthquakes.

If an earthquake is imminent, the geyser will erupt more often.

The day we were there it erupted every 3 to 5 minutes. Two days later there

was an earthquake not too far away, magnitude 5.6.

On the day we were here it erupted with lots of short bursts.

We estimated the size of the largest eruption at about 40 feet.

Old Faithful California is on private property, not a national or state park.

There was a fee to see Old Faithful ($6/senior). We brought along books to read

and sat on a bench and listened to the rumblings and watched the geyser erupt.

There were only a few other people present. I wouldn’t recommend this as a

destination site but it was fun for the novelty of it. If you’re in the area, check it out.

I hope you’ll join me again next Sunday for more Favorite Places. If you’d like to join in, just grab the button at the top of this post, put it on your blog along with info about one of your Favorite Places. Come back and leave a link in the comment section and we’ll all come and visit you.