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Yellow River Country

Yellow River Country is 63.3 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 85 minutes; allow 125 with stops — a full day. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 92 corners, 134° of turning per mile, 3,214 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-3Spirited · 1.45/mi
Distance
63.3 mi85 min riding
Corners
9239% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
3,214 ft51 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
LoopFull day
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Open this route in the app

About this road

The Yellow River picks up pale silt as it winds through some of Iowa’s wildest coulees, and the roads that follow it rise and fall with the same restless energy. Long open ridges in Allamakee County give way to sudden shaded drops. The temperature falls as you descend. The sound of water replaces the wind. This is country that still feels only partly tamed. Early travelers preferred the high ground; the steep valleys stayed wilder longer. That pattern is still visible today—farms on the broader tops, timber in the draws. High back-road miles and light traffic mean the experience stays intimate even on a full day. If you like rides that keep changing under your wheels and never feel crowded, Yellow River country is one of the purest expressions of Driftless Iowa. Quiet, spring-fed, and organized by water and rock rather than by the grid.

How it rides

92 corners over 63.3 miles — 1.45 a mile, and 134° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 39% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.

What it climbs

The road climbs 3,214 feet in total, 51 feet per mile, between 623 and 1,319 feet — 697 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 501 feet over 3.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.1%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

88.4% 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

4 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 2 fuel, 7 food, 3 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 45.6 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