Trans Iowa Trail TIT

I have laid down tracks through Iowa and three of us will head out on dual sport bikes at the end of may to confirm the route and check it for fun factor. If all goes well at the end of May we might have a new dual sport route. This route has ALLOT of gravel since Iowa has allot of gravel roads. It has minimum maintenance roads (dirt) scatter through out the route. It will take in the gothic house (from the painting American Gothic), the bridges of Madison county, Knoxville raceway, Pella, Amana Colonies, camping on rivers, lakes, some bridges from the registry, a park with a bunch of caves, and hopefully some pretty cool back road riding. The ride will start at and end at Sabula Iowa and will be a loop through the southern part of Iowa and loop through the middle of Iowa. Might include a short excursion into Northern Missouri. Time to get Iowa on the map!

Good luck with that ..just sayin Just kidding too.

We lived there for about 7 years near Jefferson, IA. If you know where to look there are some very scenic gravel roads and hidden geological gems everywhere. I'd love to see the track when you are done.

Charlie, After it is ridden and verified I will post it for anyone interested.

I was hoping someone would make this!

I have tracks from the Maquoketa area north, so in theory a person could do the TIT, then the TWAT, then swing over and finish on the TMAT at the Canadian border!

Yes I believe you could do that. This will get you right in that area.

kimzx1000r
I see you are going through Eldon,Ia. here is a ride I did in that area.
Saturday Afternoon Ride in Iowa | Yamaha Super Tenere Forum
Here is anouther ride you might like
911 miles of Missouri Back Roads | Yamaha Super Tenere Forum

I'm very interested! How soon do you think you'll have it completed and posted?

We Leave May 21st from Illinois to ride the route. I have a little over a week set aside for confirming. We do plan to explore a little along the way and a lay over around Lake Rathbun for a day or so. I will try and have it posted by June 1 at the latest.

Yes that looks like a good ride. I will have to mark that one in my trips to make book. I spend a lot of time around the Lake Rathbun area. Love the other one! Makes me want to go mine exploring! Epic!

Tomorrow morning we begin, and of course it appears there will be rain for a few days. Oh well let the chips fall where they may at least it won't be dusty!

Good luck with this project! Im looking forward to the ride report, and of corse the tracks!

ride safe

The ride is complete and the tracks were great. We rode a ton of gravel. The dirt road sections started out great but deteriorated fast. We ended up having to by-pass allot of dirt sections that would have been awesome. It rained allot and the b roads were terrible. We tried but after having to dig my bike out (sunk past the swing arm and the rear tire locked solid from packed mud) we gave up. We did get to ride some but many were impassable. The ride is great and we had a very good time. I will post a write up and some pics soon, playing catch up at home now.

How far west did you come? I know the Loess Hills very well. Yeah - the B roads really suck when wet.

DRZ Charlie - I stopped for lunch in Jefferson, IA just by chance last weekend, on the way back from a street ride to WI. Little Mexican restaurant, was pretty good.

Yeah I think that is Case De Oro...used to be the old Family Table restaurant. Pretty good eats. We had dinner there at Christmas.

The ride was great. We start in Sabula Iowa and rode south. There is a lot of grave road. Some B maintenance dirt road but you really do not hit those until south of Sherman Park which was a nice campground where we spent the night.

We had a minor mishap in Dewitt Iowa where my gear shift lever broke off mid intersection. A lady named Brenda came out and made some calls and found a plce to weld it up and off we went. We started riding some of the b roads and they were awesome until we got a little further south. Then they became impossible to ride. If you do this ride it is best to do it when it has been dry. We rode quite a bit of rain and it had been raining. My rear wheel locked up with mud, my rear sunk above the swing arm and we gave up. They are all easy to reroute around.

We made it to Lake Wapello and spent the night. We wanted to stay there but you could easily make it to Lake Rathbun from there. We skipped some of the sites we wanted to see because of the time lost for the repair and the dirt roads we got stuck on. But we got the statue of liberty!

Before the roads really went to crap.

Lake Wapello