July 2009 | Jacob Emerick's Blog

McCormick Tract

Located north of Champion, the McCormick Tract is a 16,850 acre wilderness in the Peshekee Grade. Originally owned by Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaping machine, the land was donated to the USDA Forest Service in 1967 and is now available for the public to enjoy. In July of 2009 I visited the south west corner of the tract along a historic route to the old camp on White Deer Lake.

Starting from the Peshekee Grade, which follows the old Iron Range & Huron Bay railroad grade from Champion up to Mount Arvon, I parked at the access area with some fellow hikers. The small parking spot had a restroom as well as some informational signs and maps. There is no trail markers allowed on the McCormick Tract, so it was nice to get a short refresher from these maps. After crossing the bridge over the Peshekee River, we followed a well-worn path northeast towards White Deer Lake.

Trailhead sign for the trail

While the trail was easy to follow, the rain-covered, thick undergrowth soon had us soaked. For the first mile or two, ...

• Tags:
• faith
• logan
• north country trail
• old growth
• ottawa national forest
• peshekee highlands
• ruins

A KML Sitemap

This post assumes basic understand of website structures and XML documents.

After finishing my adventure map (map.jacobemerick.com) a few weeks ago, I wanted to share the KML information online for people using Google Earth or Google Maps. A KML document is merely an XML document with special tags and data that is related to mapping - it includes latitudes, longitudes, and descriptions of geographical points. My adventure map parses KML documents to display the routes, photos, and points viewable on the map. However, in order to offer these KMLs in a way that search robots could view them, I had to do some modifications.

The first step was making sure that my KML documents were being read as KMLs. All of them are generated from a single PHP script, called processor.php, and I wanted to give them a content-type so that programs, including search robots, understood that it was a KML document. This was easy to add in my PHP document.

• Tags:
• kml
• my site

Resetting to Subdomains

This post assumes some intermediate understanding of using .htaccess files, mod rewrite, and website structure.

After several months of launching my main website, I took a good hard look at my traffic and Google ranking. I soon noticed some major problems with the way the site was structured and how Google was treating my content that would only increase with time. In order to strengthen my rank, and better divide my website's content into manageable entities, I decided to utilize subdomains.

Previously, my website was divided up by simple folders, and the URLs reflected this. My waterfall site was under jacobemerick.com/waterfalls, and my blog under jacobemerick.com/blog. However, search engines still see all of this under one domain, and this started to create a very large and diverse range of content types under jacobemerick.com. My page rank was suffering simply because I had everything from web development blog posts to waterfall photo and information under a single domain. Also, as I would like to continue to diversify the ...

• Tags:
• htaccess
• mod rewrite
• my site

Salmon Trout River

With most of the Salmon Trout River's main branch located in the fabled Huron Mountain Club property, it is hard to visit or enjoy. It has a small watershed and low average water flow, but the location and rugged terrain make this river an amazing and rustic destination for the adventurous hikers.

West Branch and Main Branch Salmon Trout River

The Salmon Trout River has two main branches, the East and West Branch. Together, these rivers drain the northern reaches of the Yellow Dog Plains, even sharing some watershed area with the ...

• Tags:
• huron mountains
• river system
• waterfalls
• yellow dog plains

Ontonagon River

As the largest river in the Houghton area and a distinctive brown hue, the Ontonagon River is a well known river. Many of its branches are simply named as sub names under Ontonagon - West Branch Ontonagon, Middle Branch Ontonagon, etc. With its huge watershed, the Ontonagon is the primary drainage for most of Ontonagon and parts of Houghton County.

Middle Branch and Main Branch of the Ontonagon River

Starting from the southeast, the East Branch Ontonagon River starts from a series of marshes and ...

• Tags:
• ottawa national forest
• river system
• waterfalls