Echo Rock

Mirror Lake State Park, Wis. Dells

When the wind is high, the air moist and the sun dim, sometimes just getting on the trail takes its own special kind of courage.  All around, the fall colors are at their peak; folks walking around with cameras waiting for that stray patch of resistant sun to climb down onto the pine floor and illuminate the millions of jewels of seasonal leaves; but for the moment the walk will have to be about something else: what's it like walking in among these ancient sandstone cliffs? How did this slender body of water come to be called Mirror Lake?  Where does the famous Ishnala Supper Club sit overlooking all of this?  Echo Rock Trail rewards all of these questions very quickly as it meanders through the forest quickly out-letting to the famous rock outcropping which stands set back and above the water as though

conceived by a great landscape designer for the sake of climbing and finding the best view imaginable.

Only one boat motor stirred from a farther corner of the lake – no paddlers today. A family of fishermen threw out a line down on the shore below, but it didn't last long.  Just below the rock, further down the

trail, you could see Ishnala perched over the shoreline through the trees, connected, we found

out in just a few more minutes, to the network of Mirror Lake Trails.