Thanks for the replies everyone, it's sounding like my original assumption that I'll be ok as long as I stick to roads 45 MPH and under is not correct on account of these hills. I was looking around on
https://www.plotaroute.com/ since I didn't actually know what the gradient of the roads around here were (there's no signs) and it seems most of the hills around here tend to average around 8% at least on the main roads where speed limit matters, some of the smaller 30 MPH roads kick up into the 10-14% range. Once I see how the bike performs at various gradients that website should be a good tool for route planning when i'm not planning on getting lost.
Personally I don't mind going slow, it's the best way to explore IMHO. But I for sure don't want road raging drivers behind me. So I guess i'll need to add pulling off on potentially soft shoulders so people can pass to my list of new rider skills I need to master.
I will be curious to hear how the 13t sprocket goes if you try it. I was thinking it might hurt my top speed too much to be worth the tradeoff and it was more for people looking to improve hill climbing on dirt but if it gets me a decent improvement on paved hills it might be worth the tradeoff considering i'm not going to be trying to go above 45 more often than not anyways.