Deerfield Nature Park, where you can cross the river two ways

Most parks give you one way over the water. Deerfield Nature Park, six miles west of Mount Pleasant on Remus Road, gives you both kinds — and it’s the only spot in Michigan where you can do that in a single afternoon. The Chippewa River cuts through the park’s 591 acres, and the trails cross it four times: at Fisher’s Covered Bridge, built in 1968 and open only to people on foot, and at two swinging suspension bridges that bounce gently underfoot as you walk.

The covered bridge is the showpiece — a wooden, barn-red span of the kind that mostly vanished from the state a century ago, here rebuilt for hikers rather than wagons. The swinging bridges are the fun part, especially with kids who quickly figure out that a little extra bounce is allowed.

Around the crossings, the park packs in about eight miles of trail for hiking and biking, a sandy beach and swimming area, two disc golf courses, several pavilions, and quiet places to slide a canoe or kayak into the river. In winter the same trails take cross-country skis. There’s even a small hike-in campground for people who want to stay past the last bridge.

A county vehicle permit gets you in, and the same pass works at Coldwater and Herrick down the road. Come in October, when the maples along the Chippewa turn and the covered bridge frames a tunnel of color so bright it draws photographers from three counties over.