Patty Loew:
We've asked our videographers to showcase different features along this unique trail that meanders through our state along the edge of where the last glacier advanced. We've shown you the trail in the dead of winter in Lincoln County and journeyed through the former John Muir property in Marquette County. This week we take you to a very urban section of the trail as seen through the lens of videographer Mike Eicher in Janesville.

Mike Eicher:
I want to see for myself, what does a hiking trail through a city look like? Janesville is the largest city on the Ice Age trail and it sits at the southern-most reaches of the trail. For its diversity alone the Janesville section proudly holds the most interest. Hike through this lake up the 1,000 mile Wisconsin Ice Age trail and you can go bowling, attend mass, get a tattoo all on the same day.

Man:
Nice.

Mike Eicher:
The trail also skirts two golf courses and a renowned rotary gardens botanical wonder. The trail often feels like any city's jogging path. Mobs of strollers, retired folks walking and kids using it as their main means of transportation. The trail referred to as the southern gateway to the Ice Age trail is a work in progress taking you downtown following the Rock River, another gift of a glacier that ended 10,000 years ago. I stopped in at Kudos, a local coffee shop for a quick pick me up and it dawned on me the glacier made these dramatic changes with nothing more than frozen water and time. And I recall something about glaciers in school. “Science in action. We have invited as our special guest on science in action the famed glacier priest.”

Man:
Thank you. If we started to study the glacier with such things as ice crystals they would look something like this.

Man:
That's where the movement of ice then begins to form what we call a glacier.

Man:
Eventually, of course, it packs down until you have the flow started.

Man:
Its oscillates up and down and pushes up like a bulldozer all the time.

Mike Eicher:
The glacier, a sheet of ice over a mile in thickness pushes and carves a new terrain. The trail’s most natural section is Devil’s Staircase in Riverside Park where you can get lost in the luxury of nature. Feel the coolness of a stone wall soft with green. And there is a promise of water far below a canopy of leaves. And so I've discovered the Ice Age trail that runs through Janesville was a gift left by the last glacier.

Patty Loew:
For a look at some of our other reports on the Ice Age national scenic trail, just go to our website wpt.org and click on In Wisconsin.