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Storm Trooper, our first-generation Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, outside Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa. The truck stop began in 1964 and grew into a roadside institution. The Raptor had no objection to a place built around large vehicles. |
In July 2018, we pointed Storm Trooper west from Germantown, Maryland, toward the Canadian Rockies. Storm Trooper was our first-generation Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, the white truck that carried our overland journeys before Shehzadi took over the family business. Part 1 follows the first two long days to Wall, South Dakota—about 1,400 miles across nine states—before the route bends through the Badlands, Wyoming, Montana and Canada.
The previous story ended on the Trans-Mongolian Railway at Erenhot, where our train was lifted into the air so its wheels could be changed for China. A year later, the machinery was simpler: one truck, four wheels and a very long road. Our westbound route crossed I-70, I-68, I-79, I-74, I-80, I-29 and I-90 (map). The roads did not require a gauge change, although some of the coffee probably did.
USA–Canada Overland Part 1: Maryland to Wall, South Dakota — Post Summary
Part 1 of our July 2018 USA–Canada overland journey follows Storm Trooper, our first-generation Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, from Germantown, Maryland, across the Appalachians and the Midwest to Wall, South Dakota. The route includes John Glenn’s boyhood home, a night in Peoria, Iowa 80 Truckstop, rural Iowa, Omaha’s Missouri River uplands and the roadside institution that is Wall Drug.
| What's Covered | |
| 1 | Germantown to Peoria — the Appalachians, New Concord and the first overnight stop |
| 2 | Peoria to Wall — Iowa 80 Truckstop, rural Iowa, Omaha and the northern plains |
| 3 | Wall Drug — the roadside institution that made free ice water famous |
| 4 | Wall Rodeo Arena — a quiet third-morning stop before the Badlands |
| 5 | M&M Sales — an oil change before the route continued west |
We drove Storm Trooper from Germantown, Maryland, to Wall, South Dakota, across the Appalachians and Midwest. The two-day westbound leg passed through New Concord, Peoria, Walcott and Omaha before the Badlands came within reach.
Route Summary
Date: July 2018
Start: Germantown, Maryland
Finish: Wall, South Dakota
Distance: Approximately 1,400 miles
Overnight stop: Peoria, Illinois
States: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota
Vehicle: Storm Trooper — first-generation Ford F-150 SVT Raptor
Principal roads: I-70, I-68, I-79, I-74, I-80, I-29 and I-90
Route at a Glance
- Germantown to Peoria Across the Appalachians: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with a stop in New Concord.
- Peoria to Wall Across Iowa and Nebraska: The Mississippi, Iowa 80 Truckstop, rural Iowa, Omaha, I-29 and I-90.
- Wall Drug in South Dakota: The roadside institution after roughly 1,400 miles west.
- Storm Trooper at Wall Rodeo Arena: A quiet third-morning stop before the Badlands.
- Servicing Storm Trooper at M&M Sales: An oil change and final preparation before continuing west.
Germantown to Peoria Across the Appalachians
We left Germantown early enough that the neighborhood was still dark and the truck’s 6.2-liter V8 seemed indecently awake. Food, luggage, paper maps and enough charging cables to rig a minor radio station filled the cab. Peoria was the first night’s target, not because the road ended there, but because even Raptors eventually acquire tired occupants.
I-68 carried us west through Cumberland and the folded ridges of western Maryland. Deep Creek Lake sat off the route to the south, while the highway climbed and dropped through cuts in the Alleghenies. In West Virginia, I-68 crossed the Allegheny Plateau near Morgantown before I-79 carried us north into southwestern Pennsylvania and I-70 took us west toward Ohio. The road engineering was impressive. The fuel economy was less moved.
John and Annie Glenn Museum in New Concord
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One of us with coffee beside Storm Trooper outside the John & Annie Glenn Museum in New Concord, Ohio. The house was John Glenn's boyhood home. Annie Glenn's story is presented there alongside his. |
New Concord, Ohio, gave us a reason to leave the interstate. The John & Annie Glenn Museum occupies John Glenn’s restored boyhood home and presents two linked lives: the Marine pilot and astronaut who became the first American to orbit Earth, and Annie Glenn, who lived with a severe stutter for decades before becoming a public advocate for people with communication disorders.
Glenn’s 1962 Friendship 7 flight was tense without needing later embellishment. A faulty signal suggested that the spacecraft’s heat shield might have come loose, so Mission Control told him to keep the retropack attached during reentry as a precaution. Separate trouble with the automatic control system also forced Glenn to fly parts of the mission manually. Spaceflight was already difficult enough; the warning lights had apparently decided to contribute.
West of New Concord, Ohio opened into broader farmland. Columbus passed in interstate fragments. Dayton lay south of our line, its aviation history reaching back to the Wright brothers’ bicycle business and experimental work. The day remained a drive, not a museum crawl, and the miles kept asserting their seniority.
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Inside the Indiana Welcome Center Rest Area on I-70 in Greens Fork. The State of Indiana seal made the stop more ceremonial than the usual vending machines and fluorescent lighting. |
The Indiana Welcome Center Rest Area on I-70 at Greens Fork gave us a brief indoor pause and a photograph beside the state seal. Rest areas are the democratic institutions of road travel: everyone arrives with different plans and leaves after the same basic negotiations with coffee, maps and plumbing.
Indianapolis brought the Soldiers and Sailors Monument into the story from a distance. The limestone monument stands 284 feet 6 inches high and was dedicated in 1902. It is crowned by a bronze figure of Victory, known locally as Miss Indiana. We did not circle downtown on this crossing; the interstate had already placed Peoria on the evening agenda.
At Indianapolis, we moved from I-70 to I-74 and continued northwest. Illinois flattened into long agricultural horizons, and Storm Trooper settled into the steady work for which an off-road truck is rarely advertised: staying on pavement for hours while carrying too much stuff.
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Our group outside Mariachi Mexican Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois after the first long day west. By then, dinner had stopped being a culinary decision and become vehicle maintenance for the occupants. |
Peoria sits on the Illinois River, a route used for trade and transport long before interstate ramps arrived. The city became a major distilling center in the nineteenth century, and its whiskey industry generated enormous federal tax revenue. By our arrival, history had yielded to a simpler need: dinner at Mariachi Mexican Restaurant and sleep.
Peoria to Wall Across Iowa and Nebraska
Day two began with coffee and another large number on the odometer. We crossed the Illinois River, followed I-74 toward the Quad Cities and joined I-80 at the Mississippi. The river bends east-west here, which makes the crossing feel briefly contrary even when the navigation is correct.
Crossing the Mississippi at the Quad Cities
The Quad Cities name has survived the inconvenient growth of the region. Davenport and Bettendorf sit on the Iowa side; Rock Island, Moline and East Moline sit in Illinois. Five principal cities operating under a four-city label is the sort of administrative compromise that becomes permanent because correcting it would require new stationery.
Davenport’s nineteenth-century prosperity came from the river, railroads and lumber. The Mississippi made movement possible, then made bridges necessary, and the metropolitan area grew on both banks while declining to choose one state.
Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott
Just west of Davenport, Iowa 80 in Walcott turned a fuel stop into a destination. It opened in 1964 and expanded with the interstate trucking economy until the complex could offer food, showers, repairs, shops and a museum to drivers who measure their workday in hundreds of miles.
The scale made sense from the parking lot. Tractor-trailers occupied their own moving geography while Storm Trooper, not usually a small vehicle, looked almost compact. Inside, the truck stop mixed practical services with the sort of retail inventory produced when a business decides that no traveler should leave without chrome.
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The roadside sign for Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott. The place advertises itself as the world's largest truck stop. Modesty would have been difficult to read at interstate speed. |
Cedar Rapids lay north of our route, but its Czech and Slovak history later gave us an internal link to our own Prague journey. The National Czech & Slovak Museum’s recovery after the 2008 flood included moving its main building to higher ground, an unusually literal form of institutional resilience.
Rural Iowa in Storm Trooper
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Storm Trooper and one of us beside an Iowa cornfield. Leaving the interstate gave us a closer look at the farms that the highway reduces to a green blur. |
We left the interstate for a stretch of rural Iowa, where cornfields came close enough to replace the highway’s broad abstraction with individual rows, farm lanes and barns. Red barn paint became common because iron oxide pigment was inexpensive and durable when mixed into traditional coatings. The color endured long after the chemistry stopped being novel.
The Amana Colonies, established by German Pietists in the nineteenth century, sit east of Des Moines as seven historic villages. We did not turn the crossing into a full visit, but their presence fit a recurring lesson of the road: the supposedly uniform Midwest contains communities built from very different migrations, beliefs and economies.
Des Moines to Omaha
Des Moines arrived as the largest city on the Iowa leg, centered on the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers and surrounded by the agricultural state it administers, insures and occasionally argues with. We continued west on I-80 toward Council Bluffs and Omaha.
Omaha grew as a Missouri River crossing and a gateway for westbound migration, railroads and freight. The skyline appeared after hours of open farmland with the sudden authority of a place that had been hiding behind grain elevators.
Missouri River Uplands Near Omaha
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A roadside overlook near Omaha, Nebraska. A grassy slope, a large boulder and a wooded horizon marked the pause before we continued north. |
The hills near the Missouri River are built largely from loess: fine windblown sediment deposited during and after the Ice Age. In western Iowa, loess accumulated into unusually deep bluffs. The material stands steep when dry and erodes quickly when disturbed, which is a geological way of saying that it looks solid until it receives paperwork from rain.
From Omaha, we turned north on I-29, following the broad Missouri corridor toward Sioux City. The Sergeant Floyd Monument commemorates Charles Floyd, the only member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to die during the journey. His burial site had to be moved as the river eroded the bluff, because even monuments near the Missouri must negotiate with the Missouri.
North of Sioux City, we entered South Dakota and later joined I-90 west. Sioux Falls and the Big Sioux River fell behind as the road stretched across plains that grew wider, drier and less interested in providing visual reference points.
Wall Drug in South Dakota
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Our group between two Ford Raptors outside Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. Free ice water saved the business in 1936. The signs did the rest. |
Wall Drug began as a small pharmacy purchased by Ted and Dorothy Hustead in 1931. Business remained thin until 1936, when Dorothy proposed highway signs offering free ice water to travelers crossing the hot plains. The signs worked. More signs followed, then more buildings, and eventually the store became one of America’s best-known roadside institutions.
The appeal is difficult to reduce to shopping. Wall Drug is part pharmacy, restaurant, gallery, souvenir market and controlled outbreak of Western decoration. Its great achievement is making travelers feel that stopping was their own idea after several hundred miles of signs had discussed the matter.
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One of us in a cowboy hat beside a large carved figure inside Wall Drug. The store has spent decades proving that a pharmacy can become a small town's indoor theme park without first seeking permission from common sense. |
By Wall, we had covered roughly 1,400 miles in two days. The Appalachians, Ohio towns, Indiana rest areas, Illinois River country, Iowa farms and Missouri corridor had compressed into the odometer. Wall marked the edge of a different scale of travel. The Badlands began just beyond town, and the western national parks were no longer names at the far end of the map.
Storm Trooper at Wall Rodeo Arena
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Storm Trooper beside the entrance to the Wall Rodeo Arena. The empty grounds were a quieter introduction to South Dakota rodeo culture than an event night would have been. |
On the third morning, before continuing to the Badlands, we stopped at the Wall Rodeo Arena. South Dakota rodeo grew from ranch work, regional competition and traditions shaped by Mexican vaqueros and American cattle culture. The arena was quiet during our visit, leaving the sign, corrals and open ground to explain the place without announcing a winner.
Storm Trooper looked entirely at home beside the entrance. A Raptor is, after all, a truck designed to behave as though every road might turn into a timed desert stage. Wall’s streets did not require that capability, but the truck considered preparedness a moral virtue.
Servicing Storm Trooper at M&M Sales
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Storm Trooper outside M&M Sales in Wall, South Dakota. A long overland drive eventually turns oil, tires and small-town garages into part of the itinerary. |
Before we entered the Badlands, Storm Trooper needed an oil change. M&M Sales handled the service in Wall, one of those small-town garages that become disproportionately important when the next scheduled stop lies beyond a large amount of empty country.
The first-generation SVT Raptor paired a wide stance, long-travel suspension and Fox shocks with a 6.2-liter V8. Ford built it for fast off-road driving, yet most overland miles still involve ordinary pavement, fuel pumps and maintenance intervals. Adventure vehicles spend much of their lives doing uncinematic things correctly.
Our basic long-distance kit included a full-size spare, a heavy-duty air compressor, recovery straps and a paper road atlas. None was unusual. That was the point. The best equipment is often the item that works while the interesting equipment is still asking for a software update.
This was the first stage of a much larger loop to Banff and back to Maryland, and Storm Trooper was the vehicle that established our North American overland rhythm before Shehzadi. The two-day crossing was not the scenic center of the journey, but it was the connective tissue: Appalachians to prairie, familiar eastern highways to the western parks, and home to the point where the map began to look ambitious.
Next Stop: Badlands, Yellowstone and Glacier
Part 2 begins exactly where this one stops. We leave Wall before dawn for the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Devils Tower, Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. The plains are finished pretending to be empty, and the geology is about to become unreasonable.
