Day 2: 2026 American Grand Tour – A rest day with a war story hiding in the flowerbeds. 🌸

Even a rally needs to catch its breath after an 11-hour drive from Los Angeles.

Day 2 was a rest day in San Francisco, so we drove 25 miles south to Woodside and walked the botanical gardens at Filoli, a Georgian estate that looks like pure leisure until the American story starts bleeding through the hedges.

Built on gold and water. Filoli was built in 1917 for William Bowers Bourn II, whose fortune came from the Empire Mine, one of the richest gold mines in California history, and from the company that supplied San Francisco’s water. The name is his motto: Fight for a just cause, Love your fellow man, Live a good life. What a great motto!

The white ships went to war. The estate’s second owner was Lurline Matson Roth, heiress to the Matson Navigation Company, whose famous “white ships” carried passengers in luxury between San Francisco and Hawaii. When WWII came, those liners traded white paint for gray and became troopships. The SS Lurline, named after Lurline Roth, spent the war hauling American soldiers across the Pacific.

The garden’s camellias and the troop transports came out of the same family fortune.

Tomorrow our team earns our miles. Day 3 takes us up Highway 1 to Fort Bragg, cliffs, switchbacks, big water, and redwoods all the way up the Mendocino coast.

The Rally4Vets 2026 America Grand Tour isn’t a road trip. It’s a moving act of remembrance, and a fundraiser for veterans still fighting a battle long after they’ve come home.

Two days down. Follow our team in real time at https://itl.ink/2026AmericaGrandTour

Make a donation to our 2026 service dog training fund to get “Kimmy” ready for her veteran: https://www.rally4vets.com/2026-service-dog-fund

PS:  We also found another of Thomas Nambo’s trolls. Lucy.

#Rally4Vets #Veterans #America250 #VeteranSuicidePrevention #WeDriveTheySurvive #Filoli #America250GrandTour