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Village Creek and the Yellow River

Village Creek and the Yellow River is 39.2 miles of loop riding through Allamakee County in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 56 minutes; allow 80 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 57 corners, 125° of turning per mile, 2,397 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-3Spirited · 1.45/mi
Distance
39.2 mi56 min riding
Corners
5733% sharp · Sweeping
Climbing
2,397 ft61 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Open this route in the app

About this road

Village Creek, a Yellow River tributary, carves a steep scenic valley through Allamakee County and gives this route its continuous climbing character. Few towns interrupt the ride; the back-road percentage is high and the sense of older landscape remains strong. Springs and cold water support both trout and distinctive microclimates. The descents into the Village Creek valley are the scenic and technical heart of the day. Remote even by Driftless standards, the roads ask for attention and repay it with solitude and continuous interest. There are no major services on the loop itself; preparation matters. If you value quiet and pure road quality over amenities, Village Creek country will feel like a discovery. Demanding, uncrowded, and completely shaped by the land.

How it rides

57 corners over 39.2 miles — 1.45 a mile, and 125° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 33% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as sweeping.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,397 feet in total, 61 feet per mile, between 625 and 1,257 feet — 632 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 416 feet over 2.5 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 7.6%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

82.2% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.

Where to stop

2 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 2 bars.

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