Crawford, Texas ? After a 26-day vigil that ignited the anti-war movement, Cindy Sheehan took her protest on the road Wednesday, while a handful of veterans pledged to continue camping off the road leading to President Bush’s ranch until the war in Iraq ends.

Rather than heading home to California, the mother of a 24-year-old soldier who died in Iraq boarded one of three buses heading out on tour to spread her message. The group plans to stop in 25 states during the next three weeks, then take Sheehan’s “Bring Them Home Now Tour” to the nation’s capital for a Sept. 24 anti-war march.

Sheehan had vowed to stay in Crawford until Bush’s monthlong vacation ended or until she could question him about the war that claimed the life of her son Casey and nearly 1,900 other U.S. soldiers. She missed a week of the protest because of her mother’s stroke.

“We’re going to keep on questioning him, and we’re going to keep on until our troops are brought home because there’s no noble cause,” she said Wednesday. “And that’s why George Bush couldn’t come out and talk to me because he doesn’t have a noble cause” for the war.

While two top Bush administration officials talked to Sheehan the first day, the president never did during her Crawford stay – although he said that he sympathizes with her.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, left, and Jeff Key, of Los Angeles, lead an anti-war march from the Texas Capitol to City Hall in Austin, Texas. Sheehan and her supporters have begun a three-week cross-country tour that will end in Washington, D.C.

While dozens of protesters packed tents and anti-war banners Wednesday, a few tents remained so at least two Veterans for Peace members can keep camping there 24 hours a day until the war ends, said Carl Rising-Moore, of Indianapolis.

“What happened here has created a shift of conscience on a global basis. It’s famous. It needs to be remembered,” Rising-Moore said. “And President Bush spends an incredible amount of time here.”

Sheehan’s first stop on the bus tour was a Wednesday night rally in Austin, where nearly 2,000 people marched about 14 blocks from the state Capitol to City Hall, chanting and holding anti-war signs. About two dozen Bush supporters held a counter rally nearby.

“Thank you for being a bright spot in what is so-called Bush country,” Sheehan told her cheering supporters.

Today, protesters plan to go to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s office in the Houston area.