Event Recap: The Inaugural Great American RC Crawl at Road America
I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I'm not a "spur of the moment" guy. I'm a planner, sometimes excessively, and sometimes to my detriment. Having said that, when I found out about an R/C crawling event that was taking place less than 24 hours after reading about its details, I was met with a conflict. Do I stay or do I go?
The event in question was The Great American RC Crawl, held on the nature-drenched grounds of Road America in Plymouth, WI. After the initial shock of an event taking place in my backyard (or close enough to it to make a quick voyage), my "planner" personality quickly gave way to a "just do it" mentality.
Event Overview
The Great American RC Crawl took place over three days, August 7 through August 9, 2025. The event featured several trails (seven in total) and a selection of crawler competitions.
If that weren't enough, Scaletra, an app and online community that promotes outdoor R/C adventures, set up a challenge specifically for The Great American RC Crawl. I've had the Scaletra app on my phone for several months, but this was my first opportunity to use it.
A collection of vendors was also on hand, including Flub RC, Joe Ropes, Wisco Crawler, Crawler Canyon, 3 Brothers RC, and more.
Event Prep
My only other R/C event experience (to date) was Axialfest Badlands in 2022, and that experience was relied on heavily as I dashed around my basement. While Axialfest was brand-specific, The Great American RC Crawl was wide open in terms of what vehicles could be run.
After a quick round of hemming and hawing, I decided to take my Redcat Gen8 Scout II for the excursion. In addition to my rig, one of my sons decided to join me at the event, so we gathered his mostly-stock Gen8 Scout II as well.
After loading my CarryAll RC backpack with some spare parts, tools, and bug spray, we were set to head out. Due to this event being a last-minute discovery, we only attended for one of the three days (Saturday).
Event Experience
After we rolled into Gate 6 at Road America on Saturday morning, my son and I paid for our one-day admissions, got our wristbands, and drove up to the event's parking spot. On our way to the parking spot, we saw the first of seven trails that could be explored, which meant we wouldn't have to trek too far to begin our adventure for the day.
While we didn't hit all of the available trails (more on that later), we found them to be well laid out and at times, quite challenging. One of Road America's best characteristics is that it's a 4-mile-long road course nestled in a scenic, wooded location. That natural setting provided plenty of excellent trail situations that challenged both driver and machine. Many of the trails we started with led to encounters with rocks right from the start. Once those rock piles and walls were passed, the trails featured a combination of dirt, rocks, mud, exposed tree roots, and logs. This array of materials offered plenty of driving challenges, but more than that, they provided fun. The Saturday that we were at the event, the Porsche Sprint Challenge races taking place, and the sights and sounds of on-track action were a great addition to our radio-controlled fun.
I've been wheeling small-scale trail trucks lately, so the opportunity to get a 1/10-scale truck off the shelf and give it a proper shakedown was a welcome opportunity. More importantly, it was my youngest son's first R/C event, and I was anxious to see how he'd fare on the trail. Most of his R/C driving experiences before this involved higher-speed driving and plenty of fast-paced forward/reverse throttle changes. While we had a few moments of that activity as we made our way across an open parking lot to more trails, he did a fantastic job controlling his Redcat Gen8 and made quick work of some obstacles that I thought would prove troublesome.
In addition to the wooded trails, two rock pile courses offered a new set of challenges for drivers and their rigs. We attempted one of the two courses, which resulted in my rig having an upper shock mount pop loose, which was an easy fix. My son ripped through the course with ease, and we were on to vendor row, where we bought a patch, some decals, and a few scale accessories. From there, we headed back onto the trails for more R/C action.
Somewhere between the rock course, the high jump ramp, a parking lot tumble, and the trail, my son's rig encountered a part failure, which put him out of commission for the rest of our adventure. While that put a bit of a damper on our day, he enjoyed helping me capture video of my trail drives and even took the controls of my rig for a bit.
Would I Go Back?
Before we even got to our car to leave for the day, my son and I were talking about coming back next year, that is, if the event were to make a return. We both had a great time, in spite of the warm weather. The trails were well laid out, and the fellow hobbyists we encountered on the trail were very friendly and happy to chat about their rigs. The only feedback that I have to share (and that I heard from other attendees) was better markings on the trails themselves. There were a few instances where my son and I found ourselves unsure of where to go next, unintentionally hopping from trail to trail at various points of the day.
Since this was a last-minute event discovery, we didn't participate in the on-grounds camping, which is something I'd consider doing next year. Speaking of which, The Great American RC Crawl has announced it will be returning to Road America in 2026 from August 7 through August 9.
If you're able to make the voyage, I highly recommend attending the 2026 edition of The Great American RC Crawl.
