ScenicCurvesHome / Routes / Iowa / Monona to Marquette
Monona to Marquette
Monona to Marquette is 21.0 miles of loop riding through Clayton County in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 26 minutes; allow 40 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 30 corners, 117° of turning per mile, 935 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.43/mi
- Distance
- 21.0 mi26 min riding
- Corners
- 3040% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 935 ft45 ft/mi · Steep
- Shape
- LoopQuick spin
- Roads
- Backroads92% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
30 corners over 21.0 miles — 1.43 a mile, and 117° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 40% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 935 feet in total, 45 feet per mile, between 776 and 1,222 feet — 446 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 405 feet over 3.0 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 5.1%. By Driftless standards that is steep.
Surface, speed and traffic
98.0% paved; the odd short stretch is gravel or seal coat. 92% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 8% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 8% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.
- Backroads
- Loop
- River road
Worth knowing
- 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.