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The Root River Round Trip
The Root River Round Trip is 51.9 miles of loop riding through Fillmore County in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 62 minutes; allow 90 with stops — a half day. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 68 corners, 114° of turning per mile, 2,036 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-3Spirited · 1.31/mi
- Distance
- 51.9 mi62 min riding
- Corners
- 6850% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 2,036 ft39 ft/mi · Hilly
- Shape
- LoopHalf day
- Roads
- Backroads100% county & local
- Traffic
- 874vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 60 mphtypically 55
How it rides
68 corners over 51.9 miles — 1.31 a mile, and 114° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 50% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 2,036 feet in total, 39 feet per mile, between 713 and 1,315 feet — 602 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 274 feet over 1.0 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 10.5%. By Driftless standards that is hilly.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 55, measured across 66% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 18% of the miles — the median is 874 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 51.6 with 1,504.
- Backroads
- Loop
- Low traffic
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.