Rally4Vets

Rally4Vets We're on a mission to create joyful communities and reduce the heartbreaking rate of veteran su***de.

Rest day in Portland. We're apparently very bad at resting.After six days and 1,348 miles, the WRX and the crew had both...
06/19/2026

Rest day in Portland. We're apparently very bad at resting.

After six days and 1,348 miles, the WRX and the crew had both earned a day off. So naturally, we spent it visiting a VFW.

But first, breakfast at the original Voodoo Doughnut, because you can't roll through Portland and skip it. We got coffee and doughnuts and a window seat right next to Voodoo's resident skeleton, who was sitting there in a ball cap looking far too relaxed for a guy with no muscles. Out the window: our WRX in Rally4Vets livery, parked by an antique gas pump. Portland in a single photo.

Then we drove out to Gresham and visited VFW Post 180, which shares a roof with American Legion Post 30. Service flags on every wall, model planes hanging from the ceiling, and that easy camaraderie that makes a post hall feel like home in about four seconds. We exchanged challenge coins with the crew there, and the one they handed us says it all: "Once took a solemn oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. No one has ever relieved me of my duties under this oath."

That's the whole reason we're out here, stamped on a coin you can hold in your fist. The oath doesn't expire at discharge. Neither does the brotherhood.

We finished the day giving our poor bug-spattered Subaru WRX a long-overdue bath at Scrubby's; 1,348 miles of road grime down the drain, colors bright again, ready for the next leg.

One thing worth mentioning: there's still open space on the car for sponsors. Every logo that rides with us helps fund and place service dogs at no cost to the veterans who need them. If your company wants to come along for the next 5,000 miles, we'd love to have you aboard.

The Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour isn't a road trip. It's a moving act of remembrance; a celebration of the country and the people who created it.

- Connect with the tour: www.rally4vets.com
- Follow the team in real time: https://itl.ink/2026AmericaGrandTour
- Donate to our current service dog in training: https://donorbox.org/2026-service-dog-program

Day 7 - Portland. 1st rest day. Getting a bit of a workout. Next is breakfast at Voodoo Donuts and cleaning the WRX fo...
06/18/2026

Day 7 - Portland. 1st rest day. Getting a bit of a workout. Next is breakfast at Voodoo Donuts and cleaning the WRX for the leg! Tomorrow is Multnomah Falls.

Day 6: Eugene to Portland 🌹 . . . Short drive on paper. Didn't feel short.Stopped in Salem at the Oregon WWII Memorial, ...
06/18/2026

Day 6: Eugene to Portland 🌹 . . . Short drive on paper. Didn't feel short.

Stopped in Salem at the Oregon WWII Memorial, an obelisk, and behind it a wall just covered in names.

A few steps over, the Vietnam Memorial. The first stone says, "Welcome Home." A lot of those guys never heard it back then. Seeing it in granite was special.

Then Portland surprised us. The Rose Test Garden was built in 1917 to save Europe's roses from WWI bombing. While men died in the trenches, someone saved the flowers across an ocean. Still blooming a hundred years later. This is a "must-see" if you visit Portland.

We also swung by VFW Marion Post 661 to pay our respects. We try never to drive past a post.

This whole trip is about America's 250th and the veterans in every town. We're driving cross-country to put service dogs - free - with vets who need them. Want to come along or back the mission? See below:

This isn't a road trip. It's a moving act of remembrance and a celebration of our unique country and the people who created it. You can ride with us - virtually or in the driver seat.

https://www.rally4vets.com/2026-service-dog-fund

Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Portland, OR 🌅
06/18/2026

Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Portland, OR 🌅

06/18/2026

Day 6: Eugene to Portland — Salem’s Stones and a Garden Born of War. 🌹

The drive was short, but the stops transformed a two-hour trip into one of the most moving days of the 2026 Rally4Vets America Grand Tour.

In Salem, we visited the Oregon World War II Memorial, where a curved black wall holds name after name of those who served. Nearby, the new Oregon Spirit of ’45 monument honors the generation that won the war and returned home to build modern America.

Then, at the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial, two simple words carried decades of meaning: “Welcome Home.” It offers the homecoming that too many Vietnam veterans were denied—and the gratitude they always deserved.

We also stopped at VFW Marion Post 661, one of the veteran post halls that serve as the beating heart of veteran life in communities across America.

Read the full Day 6 story here:
https://dven.org/day-6-rally4vets-2026-america-grand-tour/

Connect with the tour at www.rally4vets.com
Follow the team in real time at: https://itl.ink/2026AmericaGrandTour
Donate to our current service dog in training: https://donorbox.org/2026-service-dog-program

Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Eugene, OR 🌅
06/17/2026

Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Eugene, OR 🌅

06/17/2026

Day 5: Crescent City to Eugene — a centennial highway, a wartime secret, and the coast that belongs to everybody.

Day 5 had some nice symmetry. We spent one day of America’s 250th birthday year driving a highway celebrating its own 100th.

We crossed out of California, ran up the Oregon coast on Highway 101, then cut inland through the Coast Range, ending in Eugene. Big water, big bridges, and one genuinely jaw-dropping piece of WWII history hiding in a quiet logging town.

Just over the Oregon line sits Brookings, a friendly little coastal town with a secret most Americans have never heard. On September 9, 1942, Japanese pilot Nobuo Fujita dropped incendiary bombs on the forested ridges of nearby Mount Emily, becoming the first and only enemy pilot to bomb the American mainland during World War II.

But the story did not end there.

Twenty years later, Fujita returned to Brookings — not as an enemy, but to make peace. He presented the town with his family’s 400-year-old samurai sword as an act of contrition, and over time, a story that began with bombs ended in friendship.

That’s what this tour keeps reminding us: America’s story is complicated, surprising, painful, hopeful, and always worth looking at more closely.

Read the full Day 5 blog post here:
https://dven.org/day-5-rally4vets-2026-america-grand-tour/

We drive. They survive.®️

06/17/2026

Day 4: Fort Bragg to Crescent City — big trees, tiny towns, and a cookie we’d drive for.

Day 4 was the day the map got quiet — and we mean that as the highest compliment.

We pointed the car north out of Fort Bragg toward Crescent City, and somewhere along the way, the traffic thinned, the cell bars vanished, and the trees got absolutely, ridiculously enormous.

This is the California they don’t put on the postcards, and it might be our favorite stretch yet.

The showstopper of the day: the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile stretch of the old Highway 101 running through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We traded the freeway for the slow road and rolled straight into the largest remaining old-growth coast redwood forest on the planet.

Some of these trees top 370 feet and have been standing for over 2,000 years — meaning a few of them were already saplings when the Roman Empire was running things. Let that recalibrate your sense of a “long road trip.”

Day 4 reminded us that America’s story lives in the quiet places too: in tiny towns, wild coastlines, ancient forests, and the people who refuse to let something irreplaceable disappear.

Read the full Day 4 blog post here:
https://dven.org/day-4-rally4vets-2026-grand-tour/

We drive. They survive.®️

Next 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Kalmath, CA 🌅
06/16/2026

Next 2026 America Grand Tour Stop: Kalmath, CA 🌅

Day 4: Highway 1 to Fort BraggTwo forts, neither what you’d think.Day 4 is where the easy miles ended. We left San Franc...
06/16/2026

Day 4: Highway 1 to Fort Bragg

Two forts, neither what you’d think.

Day 4 is where the easy miles ended. We left San Francisco and pointed the car north up Highway 1 — the Pacific Coast Highway — trading the Peninsula’s manicured calm for cliffs, switchbacks, and big water.

It’s roughly 170 miles to Fort Bragg, but mileage lies on this road. The curves slow you to the speed the coast wants you to travel, which turns out to be exactly slow enough to notice things.

And what we noticed today was a theme: we passed two “forts,” and neither one is what the name leads you to expect.

One was Fort Ross, a Russian settlement on the California coast built by Russians, Native Alaskans, Native Californians, Hawaiians, and others. The other was Fort Bragg, a coastal town whose name carries a much more complicated American history.

That’s the gift of taking the slow road: America keeps refusing to be simple. The closer we look, the more honest, and the more interesting, the story gets.

Read the full Day 4 blog post here:
https://dven.org/day-4-2026-america-grand-tour/

We drive. They survive.®️

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El Segundo, CA
90245

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