In mid-June, we headed to Saskatchewan and stopped at Vermilion along the way to paddle Vermilion Park Lake, just on the north end of town. Entry is through the Vermilion Provincial Park. There is camping available, the google reviews of the campground are either "amazing!!" or "gopher city!!"
When you enter the park, you generally stay to the right, go past the gate and old rail station, drop down to the water on a gravel road, and there you are. You can park at the pink arrow and put in at the red arrow. There are also docks (green arrow) if that is your jam; we didn't walk over to see what they were like. There were pit toilets by the parking area as well as a few picnic tables.
You could likely drive pretty close to the water to drop and then go back to park. We just carried the boats about 100m from the parking lot to the tiny little beach. The launch was easy and we turned left (northwest) to paddle into the wind.
The lake is a reservoir created by damming the Vermilion river and filing the coulee. The lake is shaped like a boomerang. The west leg runs east-west while the east leg (where you put in) runs northwest-southeast and contains the dam. The north shore is pretty open while the south shore is a treed park with a walking trail along the shore.
The water was pretty dark and had lots of algae (not the bad kind). Between the water and the potential for wind, it might not be ideal for SUPs, depending on your tolerance for wind and yuck.
We had a good start to the paddle, heading 2km NW around the bend and then west.
We saw no one on the water and a few folks hiking the trail. There was an interesting bird blind (behind wife in picture below) and lots of birds.
The south shoreline is pretty steep in places and would be tricky to get out on.
We were annoying some ducks when the wind suddenly picked up from the west and some serious clouds blew in (it was a very unsettled day, weather-wise).
We decided to turn around and try to beat the rain back to the launch. The wind definitely helped out speed.
We made it back just as the rain started and then immediately stopped! Then there was a birthday party and squirt-gun fight to navigate as we got out and carried back to the truck.
Overall, this was an okay paddle. A nicer day and some more time would have seen us go up to the in-flow of the Vermilion river at the west end of the lake (probably at two-hour round trip). I probably wouldn't make a special trip to come back here, but I might stop in again if I was on my way to the Whitney Provincial Parks to the northwest.
