About the Container
You are looking for a black container on a hanger. The container is too small to hold most travel bugs or trade items. Please bring your own pen.
About the Location
Railroad tracks ran through this area for more than a century. As the surrounding neighborhood developed, everything faced outward away from the tracks. For example, on one side of the trail right here you can see apartments. On the other side there are condominiums. Both developments have nice front yards that face the street and parking in the back. If you had visited when they were first built and gone through the parking lots, past the garbage bins, you would have found the railroad tracks.
Now there is a recreational trail where the tracks used to be but the surrounding neighborhood hasn't adjusted yet, so as you go down the trail you still see the backs of things. It will be interesting to see how that changes over time.
About the Series
This series goes along the Oak Leaf Trail from Hampton Avenue up to Silver Spring Drive. The Oak Leaf Trail is 118 miles long in total, so this is just a small part.
This section was converted from railroad tracks that ran through the area for 131 years.
The tracks were originally laid down by the Chicago & Northwestern Transportation Company (C&NW) around 1884 and they fell into disuse sometime around the 1980s. This is how the tracks looked for decades.
The C&NW Railway was bought out by Union Pacific in 1995 and they eventually sold this stretch of land to the Milwaukee County Parks Department. Union Pacific pulled out the old rails and wooden ties and the county paved the trail and made other improvements. The ribbon cutting ceremony was on November 16, 2015.
There are nine caches in the series right now. They are numbered from 01 through 17. Some numbers in the sequence are skipped. One of the caches is for premium members only.
Parking
The series covers a section of trail that is 1.8 miles long. There are three good places to park as shown by the orange markers below.
Detailed parking instructions are included in the listings for caches 11 and 16.
One great approach is to park at the north end of the series, walk the whole trail, and then call a cab or an Uber to take you back to your car. If you approach it that way you'll only have to walk in one direction and it will be downhill the whole way.
Permission
Permission to place the whole series has been granted by the Milwaukee County Parks Department. This particular cache is covered under Permit 488.