A long weekend in Big Rapids

Most people meet Big Rapids at 70 miles an hour, from the US-131 overpass, on the way to somewhere north. That is the mistake. Exit 139 puts you minutes from a downtown that runs on one street, a river that runs straight through the middle of town, and a rail-trail that runs 92 paved miles without ever asking you to cross a road that matters.

This is a plan for two or three nights, built for a family or a couple who wants water and pavement and a burger, in that order. It runs out of one house and it asks you to park once. Downtown is walkable. The river and the trail sit minutes off it. There is one real drive in the whole weekend — Sunday’s — and it earns its gas.

Everything below gets more room in the town’s other Field Notes. This is the order to do it in.

Friday: get in, eat, walk it off

Drop the bags and go downtown. North Michigan Avenue is the whole show and it fits in about four blocks, which means dinner is a short argument on a sidewalk. Schuberg’s Bar and Grill, at 109 N Michigan, has served out of that room since it opened as a saloon called the Elk Buffet in 1892 — reopening under the Schuberg name after Prohibition. The burgers come off a flame broiler and land on Michigan top-ten lists with some regularity. Down in the cellar there is a bistro and wine shop called Louys. Or walk a few doors to Blue Cow Cafe at 119, which does American food with a French lean and a serious wine list. Both are on the same block. Decide with your feet.

After, the Old Pioneer Store and Emporium makes candy in the front window and scoops ice cream in an 1800s-style parlor. Warm night, cold cone, a kid going quiet for a minute. Enough for a Friday.

Saturday: the trail

Start at Bernie’s Place, 219 N Michigan, a coffee-and-donut counter running since 1975. Weekday doors open at 4 a.m., weekends at 5. Nobody is waiting on the kitchen. Order the breakfast sandwich and a coffee that tastes like a diner, not a laboratory.

Then the Fred Meijer White Pine Trail State Park. It runs 92 miles, Comstock Park up to Cadillac, laid on the old Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad bed and now paved end to end. Big Rapids sits near its middle. The trailhead is off M-20 near the old depot, and the stretch north to Reed City is about 13 miles — the oldest paved section, poured in 1998 — flat and shaded and straight the way railbeds are. If you hauled your own bikes, good. If you did not, check the Big Rapids page before you count on a rental in town. Ride as far as the smallest rider will tolerate and turn back. Reed City and back is a whole day. Half of it is a morning, and the smell is cut grass and hot asphalt the whole way.

Afternoon, get on the water without getting in it. The Big Rapids Riverwalk is a paved loop along the Muskegon, about three and a half miles, with fishing platforms, benches, and a 250-foot wooden bridge that crosses the river between Hemlock Park and the north end of town. An hour on foot. Two if the fish are honest and somebody brought a rod. You hear the water before you see it — low and constant under the bridge.

Dinner is whichever downtown place you talked yourself out of on Friday. The town is small on purpose. That is the entire mechanism.

Sunday: the river

This is the drive. The tube-and-canoe liveries that used to run in Big Rapids proper have closed, so check the Big Rapids page before you bank on anything in town. The working outfit is J and J’s River Run, at 205 E 7th on US-10 in Evart — about 29 miles and 40 minutes east. They rent canoes, kayaks, rafts, and tubes on the upper Muskegon. They shuttle you upriver and the current brings you back to your car. Four hours on the water, give or take. Go early. Bring more sunscreen than you think you need, shoes you can soak, and a dry bag for the phone you will otherwise feed to the river.

If the sky turns — and in Michigan it turns — the fallback is dry and it is free. The Card/Riley Conservation and Wildlife Education Center sits on the Ferris State University campus, 5,000 square feet holding more than 250 mounted animals from 52 countries. Admission is free and donations go in the box. It closes over the school’s semester breaks, so call before you load the car in summer.

The booking part

The house is the anchor that makes the park-once plan work — close enough to walk downtown, with room for wet towels and a rack of bikes. Come in summer if the river is the point, since J and J’s runs its tube season through the warm months. Come the last week of September or the first of October if the trail is the point, because the White Pine runs through hardwoods for miles up here and the color holds late this far north. Read Where to Eat in Big Rapids before you book a table, and the Things to Do near Big Rapids piece before you rent a bike you did not need to.

Three nights. A river down the middle of it. One street.