Joan Ellen Cornell

In one of my adventure posts (here), I talked about the ice caves in Marquette, MI. I touched on the town a tiny bit but I really want to talk more about it, in a flashback sorta way. That place is such a memorable place for me, and so many important parts of ME changed while I was there. 

I moved up there when I was 19...after a year of community college in IL (with my best friend at the time, Val...who I miss so freaking much, but anyways...), after community college I applied to Northern Michigan University. Now, the reason I went to community college was I really had no idea at all what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I guess I wasn't really ready to leave home yet. Weird? I don't know...but I wasn't. One day at ECC (the community college I attended), there were a bunch of colleges reps sitting at tables trying to recruit students. Well, it worked. I passed by the table and there were brochures full of pictures of trees and water (Lake Superior) and people doing all kinds of stuff outside. Honestly, that's what made me notice them. I had always wondered why people would want to go to Western Illinois or Eastern Illinois Universities (where LOTS of people from my high school went). Those colleges are in towns in the middle of NOWHERE. There's nothing to do but go to bars all weekend. I guess that's fun for some people, but not this girl. So anyways, I applied...got in (paid less tuition paying for an out of state school than I would have paid going to any in state college in IL...HECK YES FOR ME!). 

So Marquette. I don't even know where to start. Maybe i'll make a list (I love lists. Like, LOVE THEM).

I wish I could add pictures to everything I list (because I'm sure I had pics of each thing) but about a year ago, my external hard drive decided to delete every single picture I had from the beginning of college on...so about 6 years worth of pictures. I cried. Some pictures are still on Facebook, but not as many as I would like to have :( So yeah, warning: pictures below are of crappy facebook quality. 

So a list of why Marquette was the coolest most awesome college town I could have ever asked for (and a few random memories that I miss!):

- Lake Superior. It is like an ocean, really. You look out and can't see land, at all. The lake has given me so many awesome memories. Black Rocks- the first place that everyone who comes to Marquette to visit, cliff-jumped. The water is crystal clear and you can see tons of roundish rocks at the bottom...wayyyy down there. But- the water is FREEZING. Almost year round. It gets warm enough to stand around in and play frisbee for a couple months, and rarely (for me anyways) got warm enough to actually swim in. I lived a block from this lake. I would longboard down there and there would always be people hanging out. I just miss water. There were so many rivers and lakes there. We would cliff jump and canoe and it was much fun! 

- Longboarding. As in the long skateboard type of board. I remember the first time I learned how to longboard- my friend Tom C. and I went to an empty parking lot and he taught me everything I know :) I eventually got good (well, as good as I can say I am even though I drunkenly went down a HUGE hill one night-we were going to another bar of course! I ate shit on the road and got the hugest bruise i've ever had). Well once I felt comfortable enough, Tom C. and I ventured out and ended up finding a really sweet hill that we could drive to just to ride down a couple times, haha. Marquette was awesome because it was really hilly, and you could longboard from almost anyones house to downtown. Which leads me to my next awesome point about Marquette!

- The small town. As much as I enjoy Evergreen (which is a pretty small town) and I live within a 20 minute drive to Denver- which I love- Marquette was perfect at the time of my life. I loved being able to go to a friends house and only having to walk 10 minutes to get there, or drive for 1.

- I miss living right across the street from 2 of my best friends...Meg and Lindsey. We had so much fun taking cruises along the lake or longboarding or watching Scrubs or Veronica Mars marathons. 

- Phil's 550. It was a little convenience store that we would stop at on our way out of town for "cruises". Jamie would always get Orange Sunkist because it was the only place that sold it (in a can). Apparently it's different in a can :) The store had a marquee thing by the road that would always have quotes on it that were off the wall and hilarious. Once it said "Cure for cotton mouth and the munchies here" HAHA. Straight to the point I guess!

- My friend Bryan's house was right across the street from Phil's 550. We would have bonfires there and play bean bags and ladder golf. We would sit on the roof and hang out above everyone. In the winter they made a luge in their backyard (their backyard was a forest, downhill to their house). They would sculpt the snow to create this awesome luge, string white christmas lights from the trees along the luge, and build a big hill at the end you went over. It seriously was so freakin' awesome. 

- Winter up there is crazy, but I got used to it. There were so many times i'de have to shovel my car out for an hour before going to class at 7somethingAM. That sucked, for sure, but the snow was so pretty. And we had a lot of snow days from school when we would go sledding and drink hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps :) And Lake Superior would freeze at the edges and create these awesome ice formations.

- The fall. The leaves there are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. There are sooo many different types of trees and they all change to sooo many colors at the same time. So you can literally take a picture of a forest that is every color of the rainbow. We would hike for miles and miles to get to the top of peaks and be able to look out at the trees and the lake together. 

Anyways, there are probably 9873897489 more things I could list, but i'll stop there. I graduated in December 2006, stayed there for a little over a year, and then moved out to Colorado. By myself, with no plans really. Just plans to see music. And that I did. But that's a whole 'nother story...