Three States the Long Way

Three States the Long Way is a tour: 127.3 miles, a loop, through Allamakee, Clayton, Crawford, Houston, La Crosse, Vernon and Winona counties in Iowa and Minnesota and Wisconsin — Driftless Iowa, Bluff Country, Coulee Region. Moving time is about 150 minutes; allow 220 with stops. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 86 corners, 82° of turning per mile, 5,492 feet of climbing. Every mile of it is road that a route in the corpus already publishes — nothing here is new ground, and no route was changed to make it. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness

CS-1Cruiser · 0.68/mi

Distance

127.3 mi150 min riding

Corners

8633% sharp · Sweeping

Climbing

5,492 ft43 ft/mi · Hilly

Shape

LoopFull day

Surface

100% paved18% county and local

Speed limit

55 mphtypically 55 · 49% of miles posted

Traffic

Not counteda tour's traffic is not yet measured

About this road

The long way round three states, and both banks of the Mississippi. Out of La Crosse across the river into Minnesota, south on MN 26 under the bluffs to the Iowa line at New Albin, down the Iowa bank through Lansing and Harpers Ferry to Marquette, over the US 18 bridge to Prairie du Chien, and then fifty-four miles north on WIS 35 - the Wisconsin Great River Road, an All-American Road which the state's Department of Transportation describes as 250 miles through 33 river towns. It is a cruise rather than a corner road: CS-1, eighty-six counted corners in a hundred and twenty-seven miles, and four fifths of it on numbered highway. The reward is the river for almost all of it, and the two crossings that make it three states. Near Marquette the road passes below Pikes Peak State Park, whose five-hundred-foot bluff stands where the Wisconsin River meets the Mississippi; at Genoa on the way home it passes Lock and Dam No. 8, in operation since April 1937. It starts and finishes at Riverside Park in La Crosse, so the first two miles out over the bridge are also the last two back.

Sources: WisDOT scenic byways; Iowa DNR, Pikes Peak State Park; Lock and Dam No. 8.

The climb

What it is built from

Roads from 22 routes already in the corpus: Great River Road: New Albin to McGregor, Yellow River Country, Lansing Ridge Run, Mississippi Overlooks: McGregor to Harpers Ferry, Yellow River and the Volney Coulees, McGregor and the Southern Coulees, Village Creek and the Yellow River, Lansing and the Waterville Coulees, La Crescent and the Pine Creek Coulees, Great River Road: Winona to Brownsville, Nodine and the Pickwick Valleys, Great River Road: La Crescent to Iowa, Coon Valley Ridge Runner, Great River Road: La Crosse to Prairie du Chien, Rush Creek Bluffs Loop, Apple Ridge: Ferryville to Viroqua, Grandad Bluff to Coon Valley, Stoddard–Chaseburg–Coon Valley Loop, Two Highways and a River, Mormon Coulee to Chaseburg, Lynxville–Seneca–Ferryville Loop, Westby–Chaseburg–Genoa Ridge Descent.

Ride it

Tours are part of a subscription rather than the three free roads: a tour is a day built out of ten of them. See what a subscription costs, or open the app if you already have one.