Katie Tag | Jacob Emerick's Blog

Snowy Drive Down the Peshekee Grade

Katie and I woke up at a small Ishpeming motel to find the ground covered in snow. This was more than a little surprising, as it was the second week of May, but the Upper Peninsula likes to misbehave in the late spring. We packed up the car with Logan and headed west on US-41 towards the Peshekee Grade to find the remains of the Iron Range & Huron Bay Railroad.

During the turn of the century, when the Champion-area iron was first discovered, an ambitious plan was made to build a 36 mile-long railroad to Huron Bay, MI. The track would go through the Huron Mountains and involved deep rock cuts, woodland trestles, a huge ore dock, and a dangerously steep northern grade. Because of the grade and the poor quality of work it was torn up, never to be used. $2.2 million was spent with only vague remnants of the grandiose plan.

We turned north on the Huron Bay-Peshekee Grade Road, which follows the railroad's route fairly close (at least the southern portion of it). The first section of the road was paved...

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• logan
• peshekee highlands
• katie
• snowstorm

Katie and I at Mulligan

It's no secret - I really like Mulligan Plains. This remote section of Marquette County is off the beaten path and contains many hiking adventures, including waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. So when Katie and I headed up north on a cool fall day before hunting season I made it a point to take her to Mulligan and show her one of my favorite Upper Peninsula destinations.

Even though we slept in at the Ishpeming hotel quite a bit, we managed to make it to the creek before noon. The easiest place to visit at Mulligan are the falls north of Silver Lake Basin, so we took the county roads up along the western edge of the plains and parked at the foot bridge over Mulligan Creek. Faith and I had visited this area a year ago and had taken a convoluted route to the falls that involved crossing the creek over a beaver dam and bushwhacking through some terribly thick pine trees. A four-wheeler had given us this route before, but I didn't want to follow it today.

Katie and I crossed the narrow, shaky bridge over the creek and headed up the narrow two-track. Instead of cutting across the creek, like I did last time, we cut off the trail (which bends northwards) and continued along the side of the creek. The trees weren't thick on this side of the creek, but we did have to go up...

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• Tags:
• mulligan plains
• waterfalls
• katie

New Job and Car

The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me. To provide a bit of back story, I've been living in Appleton, WI with my girlfriend's parents working a few different contract jobs since May of 2009. While our income was enough to cover a few bills and loan payments, freelance web development wasn't earning enough to cover moving out, so I started applying for fulltime positions in the local area.

In the beginning of August I headed out east with the Reynolds family for a wedding in Ocean City, WA. This trip involved several incredible dinners and a visit to our nation's capital on top of meeting some of Katie's extended family. Near the end of the trip I received an email about a job offer from De Pere, only twenty minutes from Appleton. SparkNET, the founding company of EzineArticles, wanted me as a web developer, a position I quickly accepted.

I've only been working at SparkNET for a few days now, but so far it seems to be a great fit. The atmosphere is very welcoming and open, and the other programmers are very good at what they do. The sites I'll be working on receive high traffic loads and are (or will be) setup in a MVC format, two areas of web programming I could use some more experience in.

Since...

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• Tags:
• saturn ion
• job
• sparknet
• katie
• wisconsin
• vacation

Life After College

I was never worried about finding a job after college. Both degrees I undertook (physics and math) have severely limited job opportunities compared to other Michigan Tech degrees (computer sciences, engineering, etc), but I was too caught up in student life to worry about a career. Working through both high school and college, I figured that finding a good job after graduation would be easy.

The career fair options at the university always bombed for my degree (most attending businesses were only interested in engineers) and, with only weeks left, I applied for several jobs involving web development at Michigan Tech. The interview and application process was over in a short time and I had two job offers - and I took the more promising one. Little did I know that I'd be fired in ten months with even less opportunities available to me.

After being fired, I applied for several dozen jobs across the country. Not only was I excited about a brand new experience, but I wanted to leave Michigan and my university behind. With the bad economy and my limited experience, though, few employers got back to me (not many companies want to fly a web developer with less than three years experience across the nation). When my lease in Houghton ended in late April, Katie and I decided...

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• job
• mtu
• katie

Moving to Wisconsin

After losing my job at Michigan Tech and testing out the job market in Houghton for a month, Katie and I decided that it was time to move. Several options presented themselves, including Seattle and Chicago, where friends offered free housing for several months until jobs and permanent housing could be found. We decided to move to Appleton, WI with Katie's parents after much discussion.

Over the last several years of dating Katie, we had visited her parents plenty of times both before and with Logan. Not only did we enjoy our time in Appleton, but they were very understanding of our relationship and current position. Also, even though I had applied to plenty of job opportunities across the nation, the only interviews and interested companies I had contact with where in the Milwaukee and Green Bay area. It made sense to move to a familiar location that seemed promising for a future career.

I did have some hesitations on moving to Wisconsin, mostly because I was raised in Michigan. I don't know many people or attractions within the state, and there aren't square miles of empty wilderness, like the rugged Huron Mountains or Ottawa National Forest of the Upper Peninsula, near Appleton.

These few negatives were unimportant to our immediate needs for a house and...

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• job
• katie
• wisconsin

Waterfalls of the Keweenaw

After graduating from Michigan Tech, I started to realize just how much free time I was going to have after a normal work day. The month of May was a bit hectic; moving into a new house, starting a new job, and adopting an 8 week old puppy was enough to keep both Katie and I occupied, but when my birthday rolled around in early June, we were looking for something new and exciting to do. Remembering a fun adventure in the late summer of 2007, where Katie and I had gotten lost near Skanee looking for the Mouth of Huron and accidentally found Lower Silver Falls, we decided to check out waterfalls in the Keweenaw Peninsula for my 23rd birthday.

Researching for waterfalls to stop at became more difficult then I had originally planned for. Though I found several websites with information, I also found inconsistencies, confusing directions, and poor descriptions of Keweenaw waterfalls. We finally picked out a route that included three waterfalls and several other local attractions, including the Gay Bar and Mt. Horace Greeley. We set off early in the morning, heading north of the bridge, and enjoyed the first half of the day exploring roadside sites. It wasn't until we visited Lower Montreal Falls that the real, if somewhat fearful, adventure began.

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• Tags:
• logan
• my site
• waterfalls
• katie
• introduction