The Influencer Effect

3 hours ago

As I mentioned in some of my other posts, my wife and I recently took a trip to the west side of Michigan. After visiting the lantern festival at the zoo, and then the Tulip Time festival in Holland, MI, we had a few other places I wanted to stop and check out. Check out my full blog page if you missed the previous two posts.

I'm sure by now, many of us are familiar with the influencer effect. I might have the definition a little wrong, but to me it's when a place that is altogether not that remarkable suddenly becomes a popular spot due to someone highlighting it and then a flood of people start visiting the place to recreate the moment or magic of the original poster.

That turned out to be the case with Tunnel Park on the shores of Lake Michigan outside of Holland.

It's one of those things I saw on Facebook or something like that and since we were so close after visiting the tulip time festival, I decided to take a quick drive over to check it out. Much to my surprise, the place was packed with people. On top of that, some of them were people who think the rules don't apply to them (seems to be everyone these days). There's a sign that specifically says no bicycles, but you can clearly see three people in the photo above walking their bikes through the tunnel.

Anyway, the tunnel takes you through one of the iconic Lake Michigan sand dunes to get you a pretty breathtaking view of the lake.

Given how busy the park was for no apparent reason in the middle of the day, I would hate to see what it is like at night. You see, the main draw for the park is the fact that in the evening as the sun is going down over the horizon on Lake Michigan, you can get a glimpse of it through the tunnel if you are at the right angle. There are some pretty spectacular photos online of this phenomenon, so I kind of get it, but it still bugs me a bit that I fell prey to the influencer effect.

Seriously though, it was an endless stream of people through the tunnel both ways...

After visiting Tunnel Park we were pretty hungry from all the walking and sightseeing we had done that moring, so we found a nice little place along the shores of Lake Macatawa which leads out into lake Michigan called The Reservoir. It was a trendy little place that served some amazing food. @mrsbozz got the chicken sandwich that you see in the bottom photo above and I got the perch dinner that you see in the top photo. The food was amazing though the breading on the fish was a little thicker than I would have preferred. I had a bite of my wife's sandwich and it was quite good. They had a good combination of flavors happening. I would definitely come back to The Reservoir again.

During our time in Holland, we also had the chance to visit three different used book stores. This has been a bit of a tradition for us in the past couple of years. Especially since I have started to read more than I used to. We both found a couple of things at each store that we were more than happy to part with our money over.

In fact, at one of the stores I found this used copy of Faces "A nod is as good as a wink" on vinyl that I can't wait to spin. I think in all we spent about $20 and we came away with a record, and six books total, three for each of us. Not a bad haul am I right?!

After our busy morning/afternoon, we made our way back to the hotel in Comstock Park to rest a bit. We still had the rest of the night left and we didn't want to waste it, otherwise we could have just driven home, so we decided to go see a movie at the theater across the parking lot from the hotel. There wasn't a ton playing and as much as I wanted to see "The Devil Wears Prada 2" (not really, I would have though), @mrsbozz suggested we see "Michael" instead. So, $50 later ($30 for the tickets, $20 for the popcorn and soda), we kicked back and started watching the show.

It's crazy how expensive movies are these days. It's also crazy how a movie that is supposed to start at one time doesn't start until a half hour later because of all the trailers. Don't get me wrong, I love trailers, but this was excessive. The seats were comfortable if not worn, and after a while, I started getting a cramp in my leg from having the foot rest up the whole time.

The movie was great and it gives you a very honest if not one sided view into the life of Michael as a youngster up until about the "Bad" era. They don't get into any of the crazier stuff past that. It's sad just how controlling and abusive the dad was. It's also kind of sad to see how lonely Michael supposedly was despite all the people he had around him.

After the movie, we went out to a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then I walked across that parking lot to the liquor store to see if they had any interesting whiskey. I picked up this bottle of Wilderness Trail Bourbon.

Sunday morning we packed up, hopped in the car, and headed home. It was a great weekend with lots of laughs, exercise, and fun. I'm glad I was able to spend this special moment with my wife and check some items off her bucket list.