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McGregor and the Southern Coulees

McGregor and the Southern Coulees is 54.2 miles of loop riding through Clayton and Allamakee Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 76 minutes; allow 110 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 69 corners, 113° of turning per mile, 1,825 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.27/mi
Distance
54.2 mi76 min riding
Corners
6946% sharp · Tight
Climbing
1,825 ft34 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
LoopHalf day
Roads
Backroads74% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

South of McGregor the coulee network grows intricate—a textbook pattern of valleys branching across an unglaciated plateau. McGregor’s river-port past remains visible in its architecture; the surrounding bluffs were already celebrated by early travelers. Any high point that opens a view to the Mississippi and the Wisconsin side delivers the classic Upper Mississippi prospect. The roads rise and fall with the land, never letting you forget the river that organizes everything. Climbs come frequently; recovery sections are brief. The strength of the loop is the repeated revelation of the big river after each inland excursion into the coulees south of McGregor. Ideal when you want both the intimate scale of the side valleys and the expansive scale of the Mississippi corridor in a single coherent ride. Climb inland, return to the water, repeat.

How it rides

69 corners over 54.2 miles — 1.27 a mile, and 113° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 46% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,825 feet in total, 34 feet per mile, between 626 and 1,220 feet — 594 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 414 feet over 2.7 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.5%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

86.3% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 74% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 26% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 18% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.

Where to stop

3 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 3 fuel, 6 food, 3 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 30.3 miles. Worth knowing before you set off if your tank is small.

Listed alphabetically, and chosen by us rather than rated by anybody. The order you reach them, and the mile each one sits at, are in the app.

Worth knowing

Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken guidance are in the app. Every figure on this page is measured from the route itself — corner counts and gradients from the road geometry, elevation from the national elevation dataset, traffic from the state transport departments where counts exist.

Nearby roads