# A long weekend in Barryton _Three nights around one Barryton home: mornings on the Martiny Chain or in Haymarsh, a drive, a meal._ The Martiny Chain runs to 1,080 acres of water, and most mornings almost none of it is spoken for. Six lakes. A tangle of ponds and channels stitched between them, some narrow enough to reach out and drag a hand through the cattails on both banks. Boats keep to no-wake more from habit than from any sign telling them to. That is most of the reason to come — close to the whole reason. Three nights is the right length. Long enough that a family with kids — the ones who will hold a paddle and the ones who won’t — gets two full mornings on the water and one slow one in the woods. Barryton sits in the northeast corner of Mecosta County, twenty-one miles from Big Rapids and about thirty from Mount Pleasant, and it is not on the way to either. You get here on purpose. This weekend hangs on one house near the water — one of our [Michigan cabin rentals](https://roamstays.com/type/cabin/), [Blue Ox Retreat](https://roamstays.com/properties/blue-ox-retreat/), — and on the two big things a short drive from its door: the chain, and the Haymarsh State Game Area. See [Barryton](https://roamstays.com/location/barryton/) for the rest of what is close. ### Friday: get in, do nothing You will arrive later than you meant to. Give the first night away. Unload the car, then go find the boat launch you plan to use in the morning, since there are several on the chain and knowing which gate is yours saves a wrong turn in the half-light at seven. Dinner is close. Williams Cafe, family-run, sits on 30th Avenue in town, breakfast on the griddle most of the day and an ice cream window open through the summer. Small-town hours drift, so call ahead before you count on it. Then the dock. The frogs start after dark and keep at it. ### Saturday: the water day Put in early, before the wind finds the open lakes and starts pushing you around. The channels are the argument for kayaks over a pontoon — twelve to fourteen feet across in places, the marsh right there at the gunwale, warm and green-smelling, herons lifting off ahead of the bow. The chain holds largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, perch, and northern pike, so bring a rod even if nobody plans to be serious about it. Kids catch bluegill off a dock all day. That is a fact you can build a morning on. For a family, the chain is the whole story: flat, sheltered, forgiving. If there is a stronger paddler in the group who wants a current under the boat, the West Branch of the Chippewa drains out of the Martiny flooding at the Winchester Dam and runs south toward Barryton narrow and wild, twelve to fourteen feet wide, with beaver dams you portage around rather than over. That is not a kid trip. It is a good half-day for one adult while the others fish. Midday, drive. Big Rapids is west, twenty-one miles, call it half an hour, and it is where the full grocery, the hardware store, and a wider choice of dinner are. It is a college town — Ferris State — which means it eats later and with more range than Barryton does. Restock the cooler. Our *Where to eat in Barryton* note covers what is close to the house. For a table with options, Big Rapids is the drive worth making. Get back before the light goes. The open lakes flatten out at dusk, and the mosquitoes trade shifts with the frogs. ### Sunday: the game area, then home Sunday belongs to Haymarsh. The Haymarsh State Game Area covers 6,771 acres east of town, built around a lake that did not exist before 1949, when a dam pulled six small ponds and an old beaver flooding together into 375 acres of open water. There is a rustic campground, a couple of boat launches, and not much else — no store, no ranger at a booth, no groomed path telling you where to walk. Bring boots. Bring bug spray. Bring more water than you think you need. The trade for the missing services is that the herons and the turtles and the early warblers mostly have the place to themselves, and for a couple of hours, so do you. Eat on the way out. Williams again, if the hours line up. Then the drive home, which from Barryton is a straight shot to nowhere in particular and everywhere eventually. ### Booking it Aim for the shoulder weeks if you can. Late May and the back half of September, the water is warm enough to swim if you are stubborn about it, the launches sit empty, and the marsh has either just woken up or is going quiet for the year. [Michigan waterfront rentals](https://roamstays.com/type/lake-area/), [Blue Ox Retreat](https://roamstays.com/properties/blue-ox-retreat/), sits close to the launches and has room for a family that would rather not be on top of each other by Sunday. Drive times to plan around: half an hour to Big Rapids, forty-odd minutes to Mount Pleasant, about a minute to the nearest water. Bring the boots and the spray. The frogs do the rest. --- - Property page: https://roamstays.com/field-notes/a-long-weekend-in-barryton/ - Markdown: https://roamstays.com/field-notes/a-long-weekend-in-barryton.md - Last updated: 2026-08-07 - Site index (for AI): https://roamstays.com/llms.txt _A machine-readable copy of this page. Prices and availability, where shown, are live on the property page._