Our next park was Moose Lake State Park, located not too far south on Interstate 35 from Jay Cooke State Park. Paradoxically, the natural lake within this park is Echo Lake, not Moose Lake – that’s located to the east outside the park. There are “moose” names all around the park but not in it. 🤔 The main focus here are watery activities at Echo Lake but there is also a short (2 mile / 3.2 km) Hiking Club route.
There are two ponds – Wildlife Pond being one – that appear on the park’s map. The Rolling Hills Trail (the Hiking Club route) is shown running between them. Yet they don’t appear on any other of the usual maps. We figured out that these ponds were created by earthen dams built after these other maps were drawn. It was Wildlife Pond that really added some zing to this short hike.
The clouds over Wildlife Pond were beautiful and made this short hike a fitting end to this chapter of our state park quest. 😁 We had lunch near the Moose Lake Lodge and then drove back – through an intense thunderstorm at one point – to The Cities.
BOOTS on the TRAIL 