Vermillion Lake

Vermillion Lake, Banff National Park in Canada, we saw pictures and we were captivated. We did a little research and found out that the park offered a camping tour. Now if you ever read some of our other blogs you know that we enjoy group trips, besides I don’t know that I would enjoy being out in the middle of no where in Canada without a family or two and a park ranger to make sure we were all okay. Now we have this tradition that if were taking a vacation we rent a car, and we generally swap companies based on the easiest location to pick them up or the cheapest price for the car we want. Except this time we had one of our grandchildren to go on the trip with us, and so we decided what we would need and came to the conclusion that we would get the Chevy Trailblazer, sounds appropriate right?

We packed ourselves in with warm and cold clothing because honestly, I have no idea what to expect in Canada. The whether patterns there are as foreign to me as arch welding (which was a bad experience). So after several days of driving we arrived at the National Park seven or eight hours early. We got the ok to walk around the park and we just explored for awhile. To my surprise it was relatively warm despite the snow in the mountains, and we were informed that there were actually eight or nine hours of dark at this time of the year.

When the park guides arrived they loaded us into our vehicles and we trekked our way out towards Vermillion Lake, where we left our vehicles and walked about two miles. Luckily they transported our bags for us, so there was no heavy lifting. When we had our tent set up with the help of some of the park rangers we got to walk around and take an incredible amount of pictures. The lake is gorgeous, I have never seen such a stunning view in my life.

I cant really explain all the things we did over the week we stayed, I mean we just camped. We sat on our butts and enjoyed, that’s pretty much exactly what we did. The Rangers would take us on hikes every so often to see wildlife but it was all optional. I think the main thing was that we were just free campers being supervised in this National Park. We saw some hot springs, bears, tons of salmon, snakes and just about every other animal you would think to find in Canada. Our grandson love it, he was ecstatic about every venture we did, getting him to go to bed was the hard part.

If you get a chance to go to Canada or any other place that is as stunning as Vermillion Lake, do so. There is no question about it, this place was amazingly beautiful. While semi exhausting I wish it had lasted longer. It would probably be easier to take a plane but we loved the Chevy Trailblazer so much, we will definitely consider it for some trips in the future!