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Nodine and the Pickwick Valleys

Nodine and the Pickwick Valleys is 66.7 miles of loop riding through Winona and Houston Counties in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 84 minutes; allow 120 with stops — a full day. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 81 corners, 133° of turning per mile, 2,826 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.21/mi
Distance
66.7 mi84 min riding
Corners
8154% sharp · Tight
Climbing
2,826 ft43 ft/mi · Hilly
Shape
LoopFull day
Roads
Backroads75% county & local
Traffic
525vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
65 mphtypically 65
Open this route in the app

How it rides

81 corners over 66.7 miles — 1.21 a mile, and 133° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 54% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,826 feet in total, 43 feet per mile, between 635 and 1,290 feet — 655 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 507 feet over 1.9 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.8%. By Driftless standards that is hilly.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 75% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 25% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 65 mph, typically 65, measured across 41% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 25% of the miles — the median is 525 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 4.8 with 11,294.

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