Analysis of RAGBRAI LII route
Gravel galore in the Driftless Area and logos not drawn by human hands
Announcement of the full route for the 52nd installment of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa came in early April. Additional information was released in early May, mostly about alternate routes on gravel roads — and notification that the official merchandise trailer won’t take cash.
It’s beyond me why people would ride a bicycle on gravel when there’s an alternative, but it’s popular enough that every day has at least one optional segment.
Some of the gravel is worth noting, though. There’s a gravel section in Minnesota. One of the three segments between Iowa Falls and Cedar Falls almost but not quite reaches the town of Stout. On the final day, in Clayton County, gravel segments on either side of Garber plumb the highs and lows of the Driftless Area. During the May “town hall” meeting, it was made clear that those last segments are for professionals.
ragbrAI?
In the month before the ride, the RAGBRAI website started linking to pass-through towns’ Facebook pages. Some of those towns’ logos on those pages were not directly designed by a person, but created with artificial intelligence. Calls to Dunkerton City Clerk Karena Donohue, Edgewood Chamber of Commerce Director Elise Bergan, and Ventura City Administrator Donna Powers confirmed that logos for their respective towns were computer-generated. Shanlyn Goodman of Hampton said she designed Coulter’s logo, with a Freedom Rock painted on a Freedom Rock, through ChatGPT prompts.
“Is that a bad thing?” Bergan asked when contacted about the logo. It’s an important question. Towns this size do not have graphic designers on call. At the least, it shows the rapid expansion and commodification of AI art.
Day 0: Hawarden to Orange City, 23 miles
Starting with RAGBRAI L in 2023, promotional materials have included the Saturday before the ride as a “day” on the calendar. This year, riders could make it a real day and actually go to the Big Sioux River.
Orange City and Le Mars are the farthest “inland” towns that have served as a jumping-off point, at 23 and 22 miles from the Big Sioux River, respectively.
Hawarden, directly west of Orange City on Iowa Highway 10, was the starting point three times in the past (1975, 1985, 1998). The snub could be related to a need for a larger community; Orange City is 2½ times the size of Hawarden. Akron was only ever a starting point once (1982), and Hamburg way down in the southwest corner of the state has never had it.
Even if you added the 23 miles, and accounted for distance for other not-on-the-river starting points, this year’s route would still clock in among the 10 shortest. A shuttle will be offered for riders who want to do a real dip in the Big Sioux River instead of use provided troughs of water, according to an April 1 “town hall” video. Otherwise, they’d have to pedal the 23 miles there and back.
Hey, what about us?
Here are the town notes and omissions in relation to my compilation of every town on every RAGBRAI ride:
Alton (Day 1), right out of the gate, isn’t marked on the map. Too early even for breakfast, probably.
West Okoboji (Day 2), whose south edge is Iowa Highway 86 on the way to Wahpeton, isn’t marked. However, the ride’s exit from Milford on 213th Avenue (not Street as labeled on the map) skips the developed part of town.
Unincorporated Austinville (Day 5) is on a curve of Iowa Highway 57 and was on the map in 2021.
The ride hasn’t been through Meservey (Day 4) since 1990 and Stanley and Aurora (Day 7) since 2002. The next-least-recent towns are clustered in 2007.
You can’t take County Road C7X from Edgewood to Garber without going through Elkport. It was omitted from the route map in 2014, too. The entire town took a federal buyout after being submerged in 2004. While Elkport might meet the definition of a “ghost town,” at least as far as the state of Iowa is concerned, it’s still an incorporated one — unlike, in the immediate future, the community of Swan.
Notable newbies and repeats
The second half of Day 1 (Primghar to Milford) duplicates 2005.
The cross-state Iowa Highway 9 has never been used between Little Rock and Osage, but a small part of that changes this year on Day 3. That’s how Armstrong and Swea City are here as first-timers. But without an official detour, Gruver misses out.
The Karras Loop on Day 3 uses county roads R35, B20, and R20. Those riders will get to go through Woden twice.
Franklin County Road S25 has never been used before, and its inclusion this year adds Latimer and Coulter as first-timers.
This is the third time since the completion of four-lane U.S. Highway 20 in 2003 that RAGBRAI has used Iowa Highway 57 (old 20) between Ackley and New Hartford.
The map’s labeling of the roads south of Edgewood as 200th Avenue and Laser Road obscures the unique status of the latter. It’s one of Iowa’s very rare diagonal four-character-name roads, County Road C60X.
Up and down and up and down
It has been rare in the last 30 or so years of the ride for the majority of a single day’s route to run north-south, but that’s what happens on Day 4 (Forest City to Iowa Falls). It happened somewhat more often earlier on. Here’s a sampling of days since 1990 where overall travel was more north-south than east-west:
XX in 1992 (Osceola to Des Moines) and XXXI in 2003 (Oskaloosa to Bloomfield) did it, with half of the Glenwood-to-Shenandoah segment in both of those years vertical with entirely different routings!
XXIII in 1995 put Tama-Toledo at the end of a zig-zaggy day from Iowa Falls that then turned more southward to Sigourney.
XXIV in 1996 was Cresco to Fayette, with the part around Spillville being the hilly section.
XXVII in 1999, which itself was a carbon copy of XXXI in 1993, went from Decorah to Manchester.
XXIX in 2001 had back-to-back vertical days, going from Storm Lake to Atlantic via Denison.
XXXII in 2004 went from Iowa Falls to Marshalltown.
XXXIX in 2011 did Atlantic to Carroll (south to north), which was a reverse from 2001.
Map misalignments
Take a close look at the full map of the route on RAGBRAI’s website, especially the black state outline in the Sioux City and Dubuque areas. Did anyone else notice that the roads in the background map image don’t align with the red lines and blue stars? The entire background is moved rightward from where it would accurately overlap, as if it had not been grouped with the rest of the layers.
The support vehicle maps, meanwhile, have US route markings for Iowa Highway 9 out of Forest City and Iowa Highway 3 west of Edgewood, and don’t include the highway designations for County Road D20 between I-35 and Iowa Falls (it’s “190th Street” only in Hamilton County) and Iowa Highway 150 between U.S. Highway 20 and Oelwein (only listed as “Jamestown Avenue,” which will not be what the exit sign says in Independence).
Lost and found in the border towns
In my offline spreadsheet keeping track of RAGBRAI info, I have a column that notes if that town is in a county on Iowa’s periphery. It’s more difficult to get to and through these places, for obvious reasons … although this year, the route goes up Iowa Highway 86 into Minnesota for the first time and comes back down on the other side of the Iowa Great Lakes. (Brown Park, Minnesota, incidentally, is not a town.) Of the 238 incorporated communities in Iowa that have never been on a RAGBRAI route by my count, half of them are in border counties.
Even if a town has entry/exit points on a county road, that road can’t hit a T intersection at a major highway later. No one wants to try stopping traffic on U.S. Highway 30 in Cedar and Clinton counties for clusters of bicycles to cross. It’s not personal, it’s just logistics.
(Except for Bettendorf. That city probably should be taking RAGBRAI’s total absence personally at this point. Also, more than three dozen communities haven’t seen riders in 40-plus years.)
The Register’s story about this year’s route reveal said RAGBRAI ride director Matt Phippen wants to get to towns that have never hosted riders. When it comes to finding roads and towns that will get closer to that goal, my consultation rates are very reasonable.
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