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Volney and the Turkey River Breaks
Volney and the Turkey River Breaks is 29.8 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 38 minutes; allow 55 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 41 corners, 113° of turning per mile, 1,079 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.37/mi
- Distance
- 29.8 mi38 min riding
- Corners
- 4141% sharp · Mixed
- Climbing
- 1,079 ft36 ft/mi · Rolling
- Shape
- LoopQuick spin
- Roads
- Backroads84% county & local
- Traffic
- —no published counts
- Speed limit
- 55 mphtypically 55
How it rides
41 corners over 29.8 miles — 1.37 a mile, and 113° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 41% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,079 feet in total, 36 feet per mile, between 774 and 1,214 feet — 440 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 339 feet over 3.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 5.1%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.
Surface, speed and traffic
99.1% paved; the odd short stretch is gravel or seal coat. 84% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 16% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 14% 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
- 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.