Another user of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum here. Recently upgraded to version 13. Agree with your comment that Vegas has a pretty steep learning curve, but the results are worth it. I found the book by Steve Grisetti on Vegas to be very helpful in learning the program. It's available on Amazon.
DW and I recently put together a video with the pictures we took on a hike among the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon. We used the pan/crop function to add motion to the pictures (aka the Ken Burns effect). I find that I get much smoother pan and zoom effects with still pictures in Vegas than I can get with a video camera on a tripod. Works great for landscapes, but not so much for shots of people and animals, which would be expected to be moving around.
We added music to the video, but I can't post it online as the music is still in copyright.
Almost forget to mention - loved your videos. You have a good eye for the camera, as well as a good job putting them together.