Gun Lake and Yankee Springs: Barry County's playground

Halfway between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Barry County keeps the weekend infrastructure both cities depend on. The hub is Gun Lake, 2,600 acres of clean, busy, all-sports water with a state park beach on its shore — one of the biggest inland lakes in West Michigan, ringed by year-round homes that used to be cottages until everyone wised up. Wrapped around the lake’s east side is Yankee Springs Recreation Area: more than 5,000 acres of glacial knobs, kettle lakes (nine of them), and the Devil’s Soup Bowl, with mountain-bike loops and bridle paths that draw riders from across the region.

The rest of the county rolls on like that — more than two hundred lakes, the Thornapple River winding through Hastings (a classic courthouse-square county seat with one of Michigan’s nicest small downtowns), and Historic Charlton Park, a village museum on the river that hosts gas-engine shows and Civil War weekends. Barry is the county where southwest Michigan goes to be outside; living there just means skipping the drive home.