Lake Vermillion is named after the Vermillion River. Vermillion is an alternate spelling of Vermilion, the reddish-orange color. The river gets its name from the seams of reddish-orange sandstone along the banks. People just lack imagination. At least, it is not the reddish-orange river.

Yesterday, we had to move sites to one with better shade. The people in our destination site were still there at the 4 pm check-in time. A ranger we spoke to said they should have been out much earlier than that. When the ranger called the people, they claimed that they had car trouble, but they never bothered to tell the park employees. While we were filling our fresh water tank and waiting, they drove the wrong way around the loop to get their RV and leave. It all seemed a bit suspicious. We think they were just ignoring check-out time and hoping no one booked in the site. Due to this, we basically lost all of Thursday.

Our plan today was to explore some of the other areas of the park and the dirt/gravel roads by the lake, but first, we went to Canistota for Mountain Dew.

The state park has a main western area with three campgrounds, a beach, a boat ramp, and at least one hiking trail. The eastern area has a campground, a boat ramp, and the dam with viewing/fishing platforms. The east and west side also have dirt/gravel roads that leading down to various areas near the water.

Our first exploration stop was 261^st St as it turned to a dirt road heading to the lake side. We saw some form of bunny just sitting in the dirt road watching us. It just sat there, until Kate opened her car door. We think it might have been a White-tailed Jackrabbit. Jackrabbits are hares, not rabbits; hares are larger and more athletic. We saw a few birds – Goldfinch, Bluejay, and maybe a Great Blue Heron. We also saw a multitude of butterflies and dragonflies. We might bring chairs back to sit and watch. We did not have the camera out, but nothing really stuck around to have its picture taken.

After this, we went to the next street up, Fox Drive. It just had farms and houses off to either side; there were no birds or animals around. The lake view and access were very limited.

Last, we went to the eastern area of the state park. We turned left towards the dam, and we saw a medium sized bird with a large beak. We never got a good picture because it kept flying away, landing, and looking at the lake. Kate thought it was a woodpecker, and John thought it was a Belted Kingfisher. (John was right, but the “Belted” part of the “Belted Kingfisher” was just a guess. It was the only kind of Kingfisher that he remembered. John also cheated by zooming with his camera.) If you cheat and zoom in, you can see the dark belt across the chest and the red at the sides. We plan to come back to see if we can get a better perched picture or maybe one of it diving to catch a fish.

There were a lot of dam people. (Ha! We so funny.) They were catching carp from the dam viewing platform. There were also a lot of dam sandpipers all over the spillway. There were two Spotted Sandpipers and ten to twenty Semipalmated Sandpipers. The Spotted Sandpipers were hopping around the rocks just before the spillway. This is a much better picture of a Spotted Sandpiper than we have from Yellowstone.

The Semipalmated Sandpipers were running around on the spillway grabbing things out of the water. The bird list indicated that there were Semipalmated Sandpipers in Yellowstone, but we never saw any there.

Kate found a damselfly on the steps to the dam viewing platforms. She was able to get very close to it for a picture. It looks like it might be a Blue-fronted Dancer.

We drove around the eastern campground, and it had some sites along the water with magnificent views, but the sites were too short and narrow for us. On the drive out, we stopped at the bridge we crossed to get to the eastern area. On the way in, we thought we saw big turtles, and we were correct. The big ones appear to be Spiny Softshell Turtles, but there might be some Smooth Softshell Turtles too. They use their long noses as a snorkel.

A video seemed like a good idea at the time, but a turtle sunning itself is pretty boring to watch. The ridges on the front of the shell are what make us think it is a Spiny Softshell Turtle. There was a moderate wind shaking the camera.

There was also a Western Painted Turtle sunning on a rock. Well, we assume it was a western and not eastern one.

On the other side of the bridge was the scruffiest Goldfinch that we had ever seen. He looked like he had been mugged during a thunderstorm.

Just up the street, a Red-headed Woodpecker landed on a fence post, but a UTV scared it away shortly after John photographed it.

After this, we headed back to the campground, but we saw a Great Blue Heron in the lake near the west entrance. While Kate asked about renting paddle boards, John took a few pictures.

Back at the camp site, our Lake Vermillion issued ground squirrel was on display. When we put up Starlink, we noticed that there was a ground squirrel hole near it. We saw some Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrels in Custer State Park, but we never got pictures of them. We did get some good pictures of them here. It was wary of John, but it allowed him to get within about 20 feet before diving in his hole. Normally, we try to avoid disturbing the wildlife, but it is impossible to avoid disturbing something 15 feet from your RV. It stood straight up on its hind legs for about five minutes, barely moving, while pictures were taken.

Kate thinks they are cute. John thinks they have creepy fuzzy people ears instead of normal squirrel ears.