August 2011 | Jacob Emerick's Blog

Lookout Mountain

Emily and I had just finished a long hike along Norwich bluff which left us soaking wet, cold, and tired, but there was still several hours of light left in the day. We drove down the bumpy Victoria road east from Norwich Road to the start of the houses near Victoria Dam, parking at a small gravel turn off by an unoccupied white house. Lookout Mountain was south of here, along a section of the North Country Trail. North of us looked a bit interesting, though, so we took a short detour to the top of a large poor rock pile.

Cloudy view from the poor rock pile

The Victoria area is built around the ruins of a large, profitable copper mine from long ago. A historic town, some old names, and a large dam are all that remain here today, though. I am not sure where the exact shafts are located, though I did hold a small hope that Emily and I would find one today. We stood atop a large poor rock pile that cascaded down the hill below us, clearing a view of the Ontonagon River valley and some rain-shrouded hills in the ...

• Tags:
• north country trail,
• ontonagon,
• ontonagon river,
• ottawa national forest,
• trap hills,
• uppco,
• victoria

Norwich Bluff

A cold, misty morning wrapped around Norwich road like a tunnel as I barreled south from Ontonagon. I was meeting a friend at the North Country Trail parking area near FR630 and was running late. It turned out that Emily was also behind schedule, and we met at the small parking area at the same time. We both donned extra clothes in hopes of keeping dry through the slow drizzle before jumping into my car and driving up Victoria Road.

Misty two-track on the way to Gleason Falls

The Norwich Bluff hike had been on my radar for several years. Most of my hikes tend to be circular - I dislike backtracking and usually have access to a single vehicle. This adventure was a bit too linear to make a good circle. Starting at Gleason Creek, we were going to follow the the edge of a south-facing bluff over hilly terrain to Norwich Road. If there was a single vehicle, I'd have to either walk along Victoria Road for three miles or retrace my hike over the rough terrain. Thanks to Emily and her truck parked on Norwich, we could cut out several extra miles of ...

• Tags:
• cliffs,
• north country trail,
• ontonagon,
• ottawa national forest,
• trap hills,
• waterfalls

Jake and Katie are Engaged!

Katie and I met over five years ago at Houghton. We working together for one of Michigan Tech's summer youth programs. After a few months of spending 18+ hours a day with each other we fell in love and started dating in early August (or late July, the dates/definitions were a bit fuzzy back then). There was never really any question about where our relationship would end up as the years passed but it was still a big moment when I asked her to marry me this June.

One of our first dates involved driving out near Skanee and looking for the Mouth of Huron. While we failed to find the beach that afternoon we had a great time at Lower Silver Falls. We spent over an hour climbing around the rocks, enjoying the cool water, and taking lots of cool pictures. Since then Katie and I try to stop by this waterfall every time we drive past; whether we have a picnic or just splash around the lower drop, Lower Silver Falls is one of our favorite spots in the Upper Peninsula.

Jake and Katie at Lower Silver Falls

I had purchased the ring ...

• Tags:
• katie,
• waterfalls,
• wedding

Popular Music Project

Over the last few months I've been working on a fun side project to display what music I've been listening to recently. I decided to break this information down by albums and number of songs played over a period of time. While the data itself is straightforward and could be displayed either as a list or table, I wanted to make something visually interesting that would show the most 'popular' albums in my library.

Note: you can view this project at Jake's popular music site.

Before I could get involved in the display I needed to find a way to grab the data. Luckily, last.fm has a solution for this. Using their 'scrobbler' media plug-in, I am able to upload my music plays from all of the different computers I use (desktop, laptop, work computer) to my profile. They also have an API that returns this information as an XML feed. I query this API with a daily cron to pull the most recent information to my database.

In order to make the display dynamic I needed to do some ...

• Tags:
• ajax,
• dynamic,
• jquery,
• music,
• my site

Nealy Falls

A short, bumpy drive along the powerline's service road brought me to a dirt four-wheeler track heading south. I stepped out of my car and immediately felt the heat rising from the ground like a swelling pool of water. Grabbing some water and a few granola bars, I entered the green forest on the overgrown track at a brisk pace, not particularly looking forward to this hike through the sweltering heat.

Power lines north of Ishpeming

After finishing my waterfall project several years ago and putting together my waterfalls of the keweenaw area website I began to explore other Upper Peninsula features, like mountains and lakes. I still visit waterfalls if they are along my route or when I'm with curious friends. However, falls started to crop up that I had missed... deep in the Peshekee Highlands, in a remote area of the Keweenaw, or in unexplored reaches of the Ottawa National Forest luring me back to adventurous bushwhacks through unmarked areas searching for the right creek flowing ...

• Tags:
• bushwhack,
• carp river,
• ishpeming,
• swamp,
• waterfalls