The one thing one should do when planning a way out of an area is to plan a way out of an area. Interstate highways are completely useless. Get a decent map of ALL roads in your state, and whichever state/s you are going through. As an example, there is a “Backroads of Texas” road map book that has well over 1,000 miles of roads one will never find on any GPS device. Most are farm roads and quite easily found. The state of Washington has a fairly decent web site with printable maps with almost every usable road on it.

I have printed all maps for WA and have several routes marked. I have been on most of the marked routes, and indicated things like gas stations, food stores, hardware stores, etc. Depending on the time of the year I should be able to get east of the Cascade Mountains fairly easily. I would highly suggest that anyone perusing this web site and has an interest in surviving the current administration find maps for the area they are in and mark and explore the roads for at least two safe routes out of the area. That is if you live in a “metro-plex” of 100,000 or more two-legged latte drinkers.

One thing I did have a habit of doing is marking the places where water was easily available. It is very nice to have water sources known. National Park locations are another good item to mark down. Most of them have water available. Most from gravity-fed sources so you don’t have to depend on power being available.

Depending on the time of the year, one or more of your “escape routes” may or may not be passable. Make notes!! It is also a good idea on your reconnoitering of the selected routes to look for places to “park-n-hide” for an overnight stop. Note that any place at the side of the road is probably not a good place to stop. Rest stops are definitely a no-no. Every sleeze-oid in the area will be hanging around like vultures to relieve you of anything and everything you have.

And, one thing I was told from a vehicle tire place, if you are driving on non-highly traveled roads to “bug-out”, be sure to take one can per tire of fix-a-flat, or something similar. If you have a flat way the hell out in the boonies, changing a tire will probably not be the most fun you’ll have. ust make sure you can get to the jack so you can raise the tire off the ground to get enough of the fix-a-flat compound in the tire and make the tire more round than flat on one side. Same goes for the engine…….have extra water and oil!! Poor engine probably hasn’t worked this hard since you got it.

OK, this has gone way beyond the subject of roadways. I just want to make available as much usable, or selectively usable, information that I can. Hopefully someone will find some of it useful.

hawkeyes