Parking is available at either end of the trail. Street parking is permitted on both sides of Lincoln Avenue which will put you close to 2-3 caches on the north end of the trail. Parking in the UMOS lot at Chase Avenue and Rosedale Avenue will put you close to 3 caches on the west end of the trail. The distance from cache 1 to cache 6 is about .6 mile. Bike, hike, or roller skate your way to each hide. .
When I was 2 or 3 years old, my uncle Chet, called me FURF. No one in my family remembers why, probably my mispronunciation of some word or another, but for whatever reason, the nickname stuck. Whenever we reminisce about days of yore, the name FURF is sure to be resurrected. It therefore seems appropriate to use that nickname for this series of caches as I reminisce about the 1950’s and the fun times I had within a stone’s throw of this new bike trail.
Memory 3 has more to do with my father than myself. By the time I saw the Kinnickinnic River, it was a typical urban waterway of the 1950’s. That means something of an open sewer. Lots of old tires, lots of old barrels, an occasional abandoned automobile; whatever could roll could end up in the river. Thirty years earlier, my father remembered swimming in the Kinnickinnic River. That’s not to say the waters were crystal clear and free of microscopic parasites, it’s more to say that my father’s generation was made of sterner stuff, or just a whole lot more stupid. In the 1920’s, air was not conditioned and when it was hot in the summer, you went swimming to cool off. The skin rash was just an acceptable side effect. If you look to the right and up the hill, you’ll see the Hide House. These apartment buildings are constructed on the site of the old Greenbaum Tannery complex. When my father returned from World War II in 1945, he got a job at that tannery to support his new wife. He worked there for about a year before getting a job with the City of Milwaukee. My sister was born in 1947 and the three of them lived in an apartment building 2 blocks east of my grandparent’s house and one block south of the tannery. About a month after I was born in 1950, we all moved to our new house on 3rd Street and Holt Avenue.
Permission to place this cache has been granted by Michael Loughran, Public Works Coordination Manager.