Road trip! It seems like half the prepper fiction books start with the protagonist being hundreds or thousands of miles from home when disaster strikes. Why? Because travel can be a rich source of problems for preppers. Good for authors; not so good if life casts you as the protagonist.
Road Trips: The Preps
“You can’t take it with you” the old saying goes. They are talking about road trips, right?
Vehicles only hold so much stuff (and when Salty and I travel, much of the space is taken up by our toys; dive gear fills a car pretty fast); and airline bag restrictions allow even less. That means preppers have hard choices to make on what goes along and what gets left.
The first thing on the agenda for a packing prepper to to decide what level of risk you’re willing to accept. For example, my car’s three-day bag and jumper pack come with us, but the tool kit usually must stay behind.
The car jump/flashlight/device charger always comes along. (This Anker model failed since I took the pic; I’ve moved on to a different model.)
When you’re making your decisions, be sure to think about where you’re going through and not only where you’re going to. This trip we went to the Gulf Coast — where we’re probably making the locals wonder why we have a big brush with a plastic scraper in the back windowsill of the car. (If any of you out there are snickering because your car doesn’t need one of those, or maybe even wondering what that is yourself … may mosquitoes carry you away to eat later. It’s called an ice scraper.) We’ve also got cold weather clothes in there, because we’ve got to drive the length of Missouri to get below the need for such things.
Know thy weapons laws
Another issue is weapons laws, if you prefer to travel armed. Each state has its own restrictions, and some are downright Weird. Here in Florida for example, I’ve got to stick my Florida non-resident Conceal Carry license in my cargo pocket along with my pepper spray if I walk the beach alone at night. Pepper spray needs a CC license here; and it has to be a Florida-issued license. Just my good luck that’s where my CC came from. Good thing Salty looked it up before we left; it hadn’t occurred to me I might need that for pepper spray.
Concealed Kimber Pepper Blaster in its home-made holster. My Concealed Carry license has to travel with it in Florida: Proof that laws don’t Have to be logical.
Here’s the kit, left in the seat of the car for a size reference.
Maps, lots of maps
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: hard copy maps. We like the laminated flip-fold ones of every state we’ll drive through (easy to handle in a car) and get more detailed paper maps as well if we’ll spend much time in a state. They saved our bacon on the last trip down, a night that was not only dark and stormy, but also Christmas Eve and so almost no businesses were open. We ran into a whole slew of roads closed by flooding, not yet even marked and no detours posted.
The Meet-Up Spot
The last item is one most preppers have covered at home (if not, no time like the present!): a meet-up spot for separated family members. What if something goes wrong when group members are separated, and the expected reunion plans won’t work? If phones are working, fine; but that’s not always the case. Have a backup plan of a place everyone can find and get to, not too close to the prime meeting spot. For example, if our hotel had a fire or something when I’m out on the beach (I don’t take my phone out there), I know to find Salty by the gate to a pier a couple of miles away.
Travel is so enriching; it’s more than well worth the extra risks … but that’s no reason not to mitigate the risks. Happy travels!
