Eastern Iowa's wildest park packs thirteen caves into a six-mile trail system, from the 1,100-foot walk-through Dancehall Cave to a 17-ton balanced rock — bring a headlamp and old shoes.
Road trips · Iowa
Iowa road trips & hidden gems.
The stops worth changing a travel day for in Iowa — crowd-voted gems, events worth traveling for, and the public golf you can actually book. Curated by Roamward, the scenic road-trip planner.
Hidden gems
What locals say you shouldn’t miss.
Crowd-nominated in the Gem Hunt. Add yours and vote the finalists into the app.
Billed as the world's shortest and steepest scenic railway, this 1882 funicular hauls you 189 feet up a Dubuque bluff for a three-state view across the Mississippi.
Along the Mississippi in far-northeast Iowa, forested trails climb past ancient burial mounds shaped like bears and birds, some over 2,000 years old, with bluff-top river views.
Half a mile of rail-trail soars 13 stories over the Des Moines River near Madrid, wrapped in 43 twisting steel ribs that glow at night and feel like riding through a glowing mine shaft.
A 200-mile drive through western Iowa threading rare windblown-soil bluffs found at this scale almost nowhere else on earth — pull off at the Murray Hill or Preparation Canyon overlooks.
Council Bluffs guards the only three-story "rotary jail" ever built, a 45-ton cell block that spun on a hand crank so one cell faced the door at a time — a delightfully creepy self-guided stop.
Plan the Iowa trip
Get the scenic route, the stops, and the timing.
Roamward turns these into a real road trip — the drive, the detours, and the stays. Join early access for the iOS beta.