Silver Maple on the Chippewa River Trail Traditional Cache
Silver Maple on the Chippewa River Trail
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This cache can found just off of the Chippewa River Trail, near the boat landing. The cache is located in the fork of a mature Silver Maple tree.
The Silver Maple is the most common tree in the United States. Silver Maples are excellent trees for caches because they tend to develop holes and crevices that provide homes for all kinds of animals, as well as good hiding spots for caches.
Silver Maples grow about anywhere, and are often planted in urban areas. They are planted because they grow quickly and have attractive foilage. As a homeowner with several silver maples in my yard, however, I personally would not plant one because they shed three times a year, and because of their tendency to disrupt the yard by their surface roots.
Silver Maples prefer wetland areas (swamps, river banks, and flood plains) in nature. This site preference gives it the alternative common name of Water Maple.
Leaves of Silver Maple are opposite, have long petioles, and have five lobes, each lobe of which is deeply incised and toothed. The dark green leaves have silvery undersides that are easily exposed in the slightest breeze, giving this tree its common name. The ability of this tree's leaves to easily turn over in the wind is due to the wide leaf blades that catch the breeze, and the long petioles that allow them to easily twist.
Flowers of Silver Maple emerge long before the leaves and give a reddish cast to the otherwise bare twigs as early as mid-winter, and last into early spring. Sometimes yellow or orange hues predominate as floral colors rather than red, depending upon the individual tree.
Fruits, known as paired samaras, by botonists and helicopters by everyone else hang in clusters from the Silver Maple in spring. Each fruit is composed of a thick anchoring seed attached to an elongated, wide wing that may be straight or curved. The single samaras of Silver Maple spin like propellers when they fall from the tree in mid- to late spring.
The twigs of Silver Maple are reddish-brown at the end of the first-year's growth, but turn to silvery gray by the end of the second year's growth. A quick way to differentiate between Silver and Red Maples is to break or bruise the twigs of each; Silver Maple will have a rank odor, while Red Maple will not.
This is one of a series of caches along the Chippewa River Trail. The route traces quiet countryside and broad meanders of the Chippewa River. For the most part, it follows the rail bed of the Milwaukee Road railway, built in 1882, which connected Eau Claire to Red Wing, Minnesota. The railway was abandoned in 1980.
The Chippewa River was once the "Road of War" for the Ojibwe (Chippewa) and Dakota (Sioux). It was a direct canoe route between the center of Dakota power at the north end of Lake Pepin and Ojibwe territory in northwestern Wisconsin. The conflict raged for more than 150 years with the last battle taking place near Eau Claire in 1854.
The trail goes though the Lower Chippewa River Valley, an area with much remaining natural habitat, including 50% of the states plant species, 70% of the state's fish species, 75% of the state's nesting bird species and 25% of all native prairies remaining in the state.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
10 srrg bss bs gur genvy