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McGregor and the Southern Coulees
McGregor and the Southern Coulees is 54.2 miles of loop riding through Clayton and Allamakee Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 76 minutes; allow 110 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 69 corners, 113° of turning per mile, 1,825 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-2Easy · 1.27/mi
- Distance
- 54.2 mi76 min riding
- Corners
- 6946% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,825 ft34 ft/mi · Rolling
- Shape
- LoopHalf day
- Roads
- Backroads74% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
69 corners over 54.2 miles — 1.27 a mile, and 113° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 46% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,825 feet in total, 34 feet per mile, between 626 and 1,220 feet — 594 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 414 feet over 2.7 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 8.5%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.
Surface, speed and traffic
86.3% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 74% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 26% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 18% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.
- Backroads
- Loop
Worth knowing
- 14% unverified surface
- Fuel sparse — top off before you go
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.