Really, that headline is no mistake. When visiting Yellowstone National Park in summer, you shouldn't be afraid to leave Old Faithful behind and go in search of geysers that allow you to enjoy them with a little more solitude.

After all, Yellowstone boasts the world's greatest concentration of geysers, with more than 500 counted among its more than 10,000 geothermal features, and most offer incredible settings for enjoying the park.

And really, you've possibly saved up for one vacation this year, and Yellowstone is your destination. You shouldn't have to enjoy Old Faithful with hundreds, if not thousands, of other park visitors who gather practically shoulder-to-shoulder to watch it fume, sputter, and spout for a very small handful of minutes.

Here are some other great geysers off the heavily beaten path to add to your to-do list when you visit the park:

Lone Star Geyser/NPS, Neal Herbert

Lone Star

This geyser, whose name dates to 1882... or to 1879, depending on which story you believe... has a geyserite cone that stands about 12 feet tall. It goes off roughly every three hours, spouting a plume of hot water and steam 35-40 feet into the sky. (Check with the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center for the schedule before heading down the trail.)

You can reach the geyser one of two ways: From the Old Faithful Medical Center, the Howard Eaton Trail—named after an early outfitter—rambles to Lone Star through a lodgepole forest that still shows signs of the 1988 wildfire that roared through this part of the park. There's also a trail from the Kepler Cascades parking area about 2.5 miles south of the Old Faithful complex. The roundtrip walk that follows the Firehole River is about 5 miles.

The Firehole River and its bridge are just a small handful of feet away from the geyser, and makes a perfect spot for a picnic in the shade. It's a great fall hike with the colors in the surrounding trees and meadows, but anytime is a good time. I've even done it with my wife and sons in falling October snow.

Imperial Geyser/Kurt Repanshek

Imperial

Imperial and Spray geysers, practically neighbors, are reached via a leisurely hike that starts out from the Fairy Falls Trailhead near Grand Prismatic Spring. This hike can be done in as few as two hours and reward you not only with that nearly 200-foot-tall waterfall, Fairy Falls, but with relative solitude (relative when compared to the park's front-country geyser basins, that is.)

The trail heads out along the old Fountain Freight Road, which is anchored to the trailhead by a steel bridge built in 1903 to span the Firehole River for wagons hauling freight to the Upper Geyser Basin. Today the bridge and road are closed to vehicles, the cinder-covered road is open to hikers and mountain bikers, and the Firehole fills with anglers looking not merely to wet their flies but to land one of the river's storied cutthroat trout.

Imperial Geyser is something of a sleeper, one with a fairly interesting history. According to Lee Whittlesey, park historian and author of Yellowstone Place Names, the geyser wasn't "discovered" until 1927 when its first eruption, of about 25 feet, was recorded.

The geyser's legacy gained a bit more substance two years later when the National Editorial Association held its convention in Yellowstone and Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, allowed the newspaper editors and writers to vote on a name for the geyser from among 17 proposed names. "Imperial" actually tied with "Columbia," though Imperial won out in the end.

The geyser's legacy grew a bit more in 1928, when it was seen erupting as high as 150 feet, (for up to four hours straight!) every 10-14 hours. Though Imperial went dormant in September 1929, it resumed its perturbations in August 1966 and continues to spout 20-30 feet these days. Spray Geyser, some 200 yards downstream to the east, is not as impressive. Though it spouts almost continuously, the spray doesn't reach more than 10 feet.

Though Imperial doesn't erupt as high or as long in duration as it once did -- at least it didn't during our visit one September day a few years ago -- it's surrounded by a gorgeous hot spring of blue water with some intruding yellowish spears of what might be microbial mats. Just to the west are a few muttering mud pots that give additional hints to the thermal plumbing here.

The area the trail winds through is popular with grizzly bears in the springtime, and usually is closed to the public from mid-March in Memorial Day Weekend. In June 2020 a woman received a minor injury when knocked down by a sow grizzly. No matter when you make this trek, pack some bear spray and know how to use it.

Monument Geyser, aka Thermos Bottle Geyser/Kurt Repanshek

Monument Geyser Basin

This destination doesn't reward you with towering sprays of hot water, but rather the remains of a once-vibrant geyser basin in a very unlikely setting some 600 feet above Gibbon Meadows. 

It takes a steep, mile-long hike from the Grand Loop Road to reach the basin. You'll likely smell the basin's sulphurous aromas before you actually see or hear it. Once you come out of the trees, you're not greeted by erupting geysers or sparkling hot springs, but rather a collection of fuming sinter cones rising above a small, rolling saddle clasped on a ridge high above Gibbon Meadows.

According to the Haynes Guide Handbook of Yellowstone National Park written by Frank Haynes in 1910 (with numerous revisions down through the years), "One of the most striking features of this area is Monument Geyser, which erupts almost steadily 4 to 9 feet high. It is a spraying geyser having a cylindrical cone 6 or 8 feet high."

The basin "was once a major tourist attraction with 12 monumental cones and features named "Sulphur Cone" and "Trip Hammer." In his 1883 guidebook, Henry R. Winser said one of sinter formations "resembles a crouching lioness; another, a headless man; a third, like a slender chimney, pours out a cloud of smoke; a fourth whistles like a locomotive; a fifth belches out steam with a whizzing sound which is quite deafening as you stand by, and is audible for miles."

In light of the current state of the basin, it would require a vivid imagination to see what Mr. Winser did. None of the basin's features spouts streams of boiling water. Rather, they fume and hiss and spout tendrils of smoke carried this way and that on the breezes. But the setting, so high above the valley floor and squeezed on the ridgeline, is unlike any other occupied by a geyser basin in Yellowstone.

The trailhead is located on the west side of the Grand Loop Road roughly 5 miles south of Norris Junction, or about 8.4 miles north of Madison Junction. There's a very small pullout just south of a bridge crossing the Gibbon River. From there, the trail runs a short distance north along a placid stretch of the Gibbon River before making a steep ascent to the geyser basin.

Union Geyser, Shoshone Geyser Basin/NPS

Shoshone Geyser Basin

This basin requires either a very long day, or an overnight trip, or possibly a canoe or kayak trip across Shoshone Lake, to reach. Occasional contributor Robert Pahre in 2019 wrote about a trek he made to the basin.

My bottom feels as if I left the car’s seat warmer on.

That’s impossible, of course. I’m sitting on a trail in Yellowstone, watching Minute Man Geyser erupt again. As it turns out, I accidentally sat down next to a small steam vent. The vent has decided to keep me warm on this beautiful fall afternoon.

I move over, being a bit more careful to look where I’m sitting this time. Minute Man dies down, but I decide to stick around for the next eruption.

Minute Man would be a crowd pleaser if there were any crowds here. It’s not the biggest geyser in the Shoshone Geyser Basin, but it puts on a good little show. Minute Man also gives frequent play, as the enthusiasts say. It erupted every two or three minutes during my visit.

The entire basin is a joy. There are perpetual spouters along Shoshone Creek, happily bubbling pools along the trail, and colorful hot springs on a side trail to the canoe launch – the kind of mix you would expect to find in the major geyser basins along Yellowstone’s roads. The park limits visitors to the official trails, so you can’t visit everything. Even so, there’s plenty to see.

Pahre, who made the hike to the basin in September 2018, recounted the solitude he enjoyed there: "I have the entire Shoshone Geyser Basin to myself for two hours."

According to The Geysers of Yellowstone by T. Scott Bryan, the basin contains at least 107 geysers, probably more than any place on Earth other than the remainder of Yellowstone and, possibly, the Valley of Geysers on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula."

In his section on the Shoshone Geyser Basin, Bryan calls Union Geyser (photo above) "a spouter of the first rank." Unfortunately, he goes on to note, you can't predict its eruptions, and it has gone years without spouting. Indeed, in the fifth edition of his book (published in 2018), he noted that it has been "completely quiet since 1978." 

Still, there is much to see in the basin, and you need to be extremely careful as there are no boardwalks to guide your way, just narrow paths. 

You reach the basin either by hiking the Howard Eaton Trail/Shoshone Lake Trail from the Old Faithful Complex not quite 9 miles to the basin, or by canoeing/kayaking across the lake to its western edge and the basin. The paddling trip requires permits and at least one overnight in the backcountry. The hike can be done without a permit, unless you plan to camp at one of the lake's backcountry sites, in which case you'll need to reserve a site.

Solitary Geyser is worth the hike to reach/Kurt Repanshek file

Solitary Geyser

Once upon a time, there actually was a heated indoor pool at the Old Faithful Complex. This was not your average heated pool, however. Beginning in 1915 and continuing until 1948 the hot water was supplied by Solitary Spring, a thermal feature nearly half a mile away from the pool. But tapping the spring for the swimming pool caused its water level to drop, and the spring transitioned into a geyser that erupted every few minutes to a height of about 25 feet. Today it's not a huge eruption, perhaps 3 or 4 feet, but the backstory is interesting and you can enjoy solitude at Solitary while the crowds are down the trail ringing Old Faithful.

You can find Solitary Geyser by hiking the trail to Observation Point above Old Faithful, and continuing north to a small clearing where the geyser simmers. Make this hike in winter on snowshoes and you'll be overwhelmed by the solitude ... and build a hearty appetite for dinner back at the Snow Lodge.

A nighttime eruption of Old Faithful can often be done with a fair measure of solitude/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

Now, of course you want to see Old Faithful erupt before your vacation ends. And you can greatly increase the solitude under which you see it do so if you time your geyser gazing carefully. Early mornings, say right around sunrise, or evenings while the sun is setting and while most visitors are eating dinner.

We've also enjoyed watching the venerable geyser erupt under the light of the moon, which creates a particularly memorable experience. And if you visit the park in winter, well, you'll have plenty of solitude to enjoy the venerable geyser.

Traveler postscript: If you go, this is the essential reference for Yellowstone’s geysers: T. Scott Bryan, The Geysers of Yellowstone, Fifth Edition. University Press of Colorado, 2018.