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Yellow River and the Volney Coulees

Yellow River and the Volney Coulees is 40.9 miles of point-to-point 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 53 minutes; allow 75 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 77 corners, 149° of turning per mile, 2,621 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-4Twisty · 1.88/mi
Distance
40.9 mi53 min riding
Corners
7738% sharp · Sweeping
Climbing
2,621 ft64 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf morning
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Open this route in the app

About this road

The Yellow River valley and the intricate Volney coulees produce some of the tightest, most continuous terrain in the Iowa set. Corners come frequently, climbing rarely lets up, and the sense of remoteness is strong even by regional standards. The landscape around Volney feels unfinished in the best way—still being shaped, still full of hidden side valleys. This is a sport ride that rewards attention to both the road and the land that forced every turn. Few long straightaways, fewer flat sections. The geometry stays engaging from start to finish. If you value pure road quality over services or famous landmarks, the Yellow River–Volney country will feel like a discovery. Quiet, demanding, and completely shaped by the terrain.

How it rides

77 corners over 40.9 miles — 1.88 a mile, and 149° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty on the five-point curviness scale. 38% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as sweeping.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,621 feet in total, 64 feet per mile, between 620 and 1,210 feet — 590 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 431 feet over 1.9 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.0%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

95.1% 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

3 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 1 fuel, 2 food, 2 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 40.8 miles. Worth knowing before you set off if your tank is small. Some towns on this road are not yet measured along the line, so treat that as the worst case rather than the likely one.

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