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Great River Road: New Albin to McGregor

Great River Road: New Albin to McGregor is 39.2 miles of point-to-point riding through Allamakee and Clayton Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 47 minutes; allow 70 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 42 corners, 101° of turning per mile, 2,392 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.07/mi
Distance
39.2 mi47 min riding
Corners
4231% sharp · Sweeping
Climbing
2,392 ft61 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf morning
Roads
Backroads97% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Speed limit
45 mphtypically 45
Open this route in the app

How it rides

42 corners over 39.2 miles — 1.07 a mile, and 101° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 31% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as sweeping.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,392 feet in total, 61 feet per mile, between 621 and 1,126 feet — 505 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 484 feet over 2.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.6%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

98.8% paved; the odd short stretch is gravel or seal coat. 97% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 3% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 45 mph, typically 45, measured across 1% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.

Worth knowing

Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken notes along the way 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