(Radio Iowa)  – A major road upgrade in the Iowa Great Lakes region is ahead of schedule. Iowa D-O-T engineer Darwin Bishop says the goal is for out-of-town motorists on Highway 71 to think everything looks normal during tourism season. “We’re on schedule to be completed with our roadway paving May 24. We might be out there for a couple of weeks after that working on driveways and sprinkler systems and sod,” Bishop says. “We’re going to go through and repaint everything through town so it looks nice for vacation season and hopefully there’s very little interruption for anybody.”

The project began LAST spring, replacing Highway 71 pavement and some sidewalks in Okoboji and Arnolds Park. “The rain has slowed us down a little bit, but we had a great start and the contractor has been doing a real good job of moving his crew around to the work that the weather conditions allow,” Bishop says, “so if it’s a little muddy and dirty, they’ll work in an area where they’re not in the dirt and then when the weather’s good, they can pave away.”

Iowa DOT map of Highway 71 in Iowa Great Lakes region

All of the road construction in the area should be done by Labor Day. Bishop says they’ll replace the adjacent sod in the spring of 2025. Highway 71 is the main thoroughfare through the Great Lakes. According to Vacation Okoboji, cell phone data indicates over 180-thousand tourists visited the area last July – about a quarter of them stayed more than six days.