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Military Ridge to the Lower Wisconsin
Military Ridge to the Lower Wisconsin is 66.1 miles of loop riding through Grant and Iowa Counties in Wisconsin — Coulee Region, the coulees, ridge tops and river bluffs of south-west wisconsin. Moving time is about 78 minutes; allow 115 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 63 corners, 136° of turning per mile, 2,757 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-1Cruiser · 0.95/mi
- Distance
- 66.1 mi78 min riding
- Corners
- 6345% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 2,757 ft42 ft/mi · Hilly
- Shape
- LoopHalf day
- Roads
- 83% back road17% state or US route
- Traffic
- Not countedno state counts on these roads
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 45
About this road
Off the ridge and down to the river. The route leaves the high farmland around Cobb and Montfort and works down to Muscoda on the Wisconsin. The valley it drops into was cut as a deep gorge through sandstone and dolomite laid down between 600 and 430 million years ago, and it narrows to about two miles wide at Muscoda. Sixty-six miles with the turning spread thinly — a long look at the country rather than a cornering exercise.
How it rides
63 corners over 66.1 miles — 0.95 a mile, and 136° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-1, Cruiser on the five-point curviness scale. 45% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 2,757 feet in total, 42 feet per mile, between 673 and 1,231 feet — 558 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 254 feet over 0.9 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.2%. For this country that is hilly.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 83% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 17% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 45, measured across 12% of the route. State traffic counts cover only 4% of these miles, too little to put a number on, which is itself a fair sign of how quiet they are.
Where to stop
Nothing listed on this road yet. It passes 7 places and we have nothing listed in any of them. Some of these places are a church and a grain bin rather than a village. Carry what you need, and start with a full tank.
We would rather say a road has nothing on it than fill the space with a guess — a stop that is not there is worse than no stop at all when you are thirty miles from anywhere.
- Backroads
- Loop
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 NASA SRTM, traffic from the state transport department where counts exist.