PICTURE POST: A Late Spring Visit To Lake Vermillion

This is one of those trips that really could have started or ended with the Red Green Show theme, if not both.

Granted, it's mostly because of two fairly big mistakes I really didn't think about until after I was home and done with everything. I'd worn a dark colored, long-sleeved shirt on a sunny day, and worse yet, I forgot to bring a hat. At least I had beverages to stay hydrated with and took advantage of the water fountains around the park.

It's been a couple years since I've been to this particular park. They've been doing a lot of work on it, and it's still ongoing. First thing I did when I got there was have a sandwich and a drink in the picnic area I always used when I went there more regularly. The Game, Fish and Parks Department did some much needed work on some of those facilities, including what they call the “vault toilets”, which might explain why this sign looked smaller than I remembered:

After all that, I started just looking around at stuff, listening to the birds and all that, since it was a nice day. Took this shot and texted it to my family:

My sister-in-law said it looked like a computer desktop wallpaper, and I guess it kind of does. Also, there's a few nice clouds there, too.

There are a few stands of trees around. We'll see later on that they're mostly junipers, but here's a few that are different, including this spindly little pine of some other sort:

Then I decided to do a little fishing, starting over by the boat ramp. There's a lot of riprap around that part of the lake to prevent erosion, so I couldn't really get too close to the shore:

There's a big, main dock for launching boats off to the right of this picture, but there was somebody launching a boat when I got there, so I spent about a half hour trying from the one behind the sign here:

Maybe if I have better luck fishing someplace, I might scan the QR code on this one and see what sort of prizes they've got for that sort of thing:

And here's some good advice for being around boat ramps:

After not catching anything by the boat ramp, I went over to the fishing dock by the picnic shelter. It's down a bit of a hill from where I parked, so I got a couple pictures to demonstrate that:

Part of the reason for that set of pictures is that I had a two-and-a-half gallon bucket half or two-thirds full of water that I would have managed to get from the dock all the way back to the car in one go if I hadn't dropped the lid halfway there.

But I didn't have any better luck on that fishing dock in about another half hour, I gave up there, too and decided to go on the hiking trail instead. Most of the pictures here are going to come from that portion of the trip, and I only did about half the trail. Here's the first half or so of them:

This point of interest along the trail was about halfway through the part I did, which means I did about three quarters of a mile of a mile and a half trail:

These last three are shots I kind of remember taking quite a long time ago, for something that turned into an unintentional project for a message board I was involved with called GlitterRock's Cap Page Board, which shut down several years ago. There's been a lot of growth on the trees since then:

All in all, it was a fun day. I may have overdone it a bit, and I hope I don't wind up regretting it. I'd like to do more of this in the future. Hopefully, I'll be able to.