Love Dubuque. Loras is a beautiful campus. I have a good friend who went to Loras (we met as adults well after college) and he enjoyed his time there a lot. My wife had actually committed to run track there before Northern Iowa offered her a partial scholarship. I've never met anyone who went to school there and didn't have a quality experience they remember fondly.
It's a good school, in an area with more to do than you'd think. There are a couple quality ski hills in the area (Sundown in Iowa, Chestnut in Illinois), 3 mountain bike parks, a longer crushed limestone bike trail. Downtown Dubuque has gotten a lot of investment in recent years and has some really solid restaurants, breweries, bars, and decent music venues. Galena, IL is just down the road (small charming Midwestern town where people from Chicago go to "get away from it all"). Dubuque has several cool state parks nearby (Mines of Spain, Backbone) with lots of hiking. The Mississippi itself provides a lot of cool outdoor recreation.
If you're good with private religious schools and all that entails, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Loras, IMO.