Day 18: Denver to Amarillo — Goodbyes, a Brother Rat, and the Road Turns South

2026 Rally4Vets America Grand Tour

Today, the tour changed shape.

For two weeks and change, all the way from Los Angeles, I’ve had a co-driver and partner riding shotgun through every mile, every veteran post, every monument, every Snack Attack, and every goosebump moment this country could throw at us. This morning, I dropped my at Denver International Airport for a flight home to Virginia. From here to Orlando, it’s just me, the WRX, and a console full of challenge coins.

I won’t pretend that drop-off was easy. We packed the Inno roof box one last time together, said our goodbyes under the United canopy, and then I pointed the car south with an empty passenger seat and a full heart. The mission rolls on, but it sure was quieter pulling away from that curb.

A Brother Rat in Colorado Springs

If you’re going to start driving solo, there’s no better cure for an empty passenger seat than meeting up with a Brother Rat.

Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and at VMI, the cadets who survive their first year with the formative gauntlet known as the Rat Line become “Brother Rats” for life. It’s not a casual phrase. It’s a bond of shared hardship and mutual respect that holds for decades, right to the final roll call. So when I rolled into Colorado Springs and met up with a classmate of mine and his wife, it wasn’t really a reunion. It was just family, picking up where we always do. (The VMIARMY plate on the car got a knowing nod, of course.)

While in the Springs, the Rally4Vets car paid its respects at two more posts with serious history.

The first was American Legion PFC Floyd K. Lindstrom Post 5, Colorado Springs’ oldest active Legion post, chartered in 1919. Post 5 is named for a genuine hometown hero: PFC Floyd K. Lindstrom, a Medal of Honor recipient who earned the nickname “the one man army.” On November 11, 1943, near Mignano, Italy, with his unit pinned down by German machine-gun fire, Lindstrom hauled his machine gun up a steep, rocky slope under fire, single-handedly charged a German gun nest, and broke up the enemy counterattack. He was killed in action at Anzio a few months later and awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

He was nearly forgotten in his own hometown until the members of Post 5 spent years digging through archives and microfilm to make sure his name was remembered, getting the post, a VA clinic, and memorials named in his honor. That’s what these posts do. They keep faith with the fallen. Standing in front of that flagpole was humbling.

The second was VFW Post 101, a handsome green-roofed hall flying the colors with Pikes Peak rising behind it, and a sign out front with exactly the right four words: “Veterans — Thank You, Welcome Home.” It sits on the Purple Heart Trail. Another post, another reminder that this whole country is stitched together by these halls and the people who keep them open.

Garden of the Gods

Before the long haul, my Brother Rat steered me through one of Colorado’s natural wonders: Garden of the Gods, the free city park in Colorado Springs where towering red sandstone formations jut straight out of the earth against the backdrop of Pikes Peak. We took a brief drive through — Balanced Rock and all — and even a quick pass is enough to leave you slack-jawed. Giant fins of crimson rock, 300 million years in the making, framed by green pines and bright blue Colorado sky. The Rally car looked right at home parked beneath it all.

Five Hours to Texas

And then it was time to drive. Really drive.

Five hours south and east, out of the mountains and onto the high plains, until the land flattened and opened and the sky got even bigger — and there it was: “Welcome to Texas — Drive Friendly, the Texas Way.” State number ten or so on this journey, and the first time on this whole tour I crossed a state line with nobody in the passenger seat to high-five. I pulled over, got the photo, said it out loud to nobody in particular — Hello, Texas — and rolled on into Amarillo as the day wound down.

Solo driving has a different rhythm. More quiet. More thinking. More time to reflect on the people and places we have experienced since California: the Special Forces vet at the Rocket Motel, the code talker’s Bronze Star, the Gold Star families, the posts in towns people don’t usually visit. They’re all riding with me, in a way. The car’s never really empty.

Looking Ahead — A Long One

Tomorrow’s a big one: a quick stop at Cadillac Ranch right here outside Amarillo — Texas’s own answer to Carhenge, a row of graffiti-covered Cadillacs buried nose-down in a field — and then a ten-hour run all the way to San Antonio. The Alamo is calling. That’s a long day alone behind the wheel, but that’s the job. We drive. They survive.

For tonight: Amarillo, a quiet motel room, a Snack Attack, and gratitude for a Brother Rat who made the first solo day feel a whole lot less solo.

What a country.

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.

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