Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

July 28, 2004: RAGBRAI converges on Steamboat Rock.

The route for RAGBRAI XLIII was released late Saturday, and a video touts visits to eight towns the ride has never been through. Comparing the 2015 route map — available day-by-day in the Register’s article, or as a whole on Google — to previous routes, here’s what I see.

The 2015 RAGBRAI route begins and ends in recently traveled territory but explores new ground in the middle.

• Day 1 is, with some changes, a retread of 2010. Both missed a chance to reach Alta, one of the largest unvisited towns.
• There is actually a ninth new town the video didn’t mention — 120th Street leaving Storm Lake goes down the east city limits of Lakeside. Later that day, the route makes a special effort to go to Manson, which after last year is the sixth-largest unvisited non-suburb.
• The ride has never used IA 7 between US 71 and IA 4 before.
• The “gravel loop” to Pomeroy mostly misses the town of Pomeroy, at least unless further details are released. The city limits may extend east of IA 4/7, but development doesn’t.
• From Duncombe to Alden, RAGBRAI will follow old US 20, parts never traveled or only seen in 1995.
• Riders will be crossing I-35 mid-Tuesday, which is hauling it pretty fast across the western half of the state.
• More of old 20, a segment that wasn’t accessible to RAGBRAI because of high traffic until 2003, is on the map too, from Ackley to New Hartford.
• Parkersburg and Hudson both get their second visits this decade (2010).
• The route’s stairsteps from Hudson to Vinton just miss Tama County and will be either all new or untouched since 1983. Vinton to Springville, though, is nearly all recycled from 2012 or 2004.
• From near Springville to Solon, the 2008 route is reused but reversed (southbound instead of northbound). That’s doubly interesting because there are far fewer significant north-south segments used nowadays compared with the ride’s first 15 years.
• W66 out of Iowa City hasn’t been used since 1990, and F62 to West Liberty is all new, but the entire Moscow-to-Davenport segment is identical to 2011. I wonder if there’ll be an official path into Stockton.
• Bettendorf misses out again. Was it something you said?

Southern and especially southwestern Iowa seemed due for a visit last year — 1981, 1992, 2003 — but their wait will continue. Allamakee County enters its 28th year of RAGBRAI drought (1977), and Louisa its 26th (1979). By my count, there are nearly 300 incorporated places that have never been part of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, but only 35 with a population above 1000.

You can see my complete (and, as with all this, unofficial) list of towns on every RAGBRAI route since its inception here.