I recently relocated from a rural suburb in a purple state to a much smaller community in a very red state. I had long-term plans to make this move, but an unexpected career change enabled me to move sooner than expected. While my new home is not a compound deep in the woods, it does provide me with more security, more privacy, the ability to expand my gardening efforts, the option of raising some chickens and/or rabbits in the future, abundant wildlife, and a smaller community where people go to church and value their freedom.
When making our relocation decision, my wife and I decided that we wanted a location that would be our final home. This was an extremely important decision, so we visited the general area on many occasions, getting to know the area, visiting many towns, and looking at a large number of properties and houses. This was a multi-year research effort. One of our considerations was the proximity to hospitals and doctors. The area we were considering was rural and mountainous. Some of the specific locations that we considered were ruled out as we believed them to be too far from appropriate medical treatment if one of us had a dire health emergency. We settled on a location that was rural and private but was an acceptable distance from a good hospital.
We purchased our red state home several months ago and only recently sold our purple state home and moved to our new location. During that interim period during which we owned both houses, we moved some of our materials and belongings so that we could sort of camp out in the new home during many trips there to make repairs and updates on the new house.
Bugging out by vehicle
It occurred to me prior to one of these trips, that I could use that trip to test what it would be like to bug out by vehicle. I needed to move my preps to the new location anyway, so I killed two birds with one stone. I have a mid-sized SUV and a hitch-mounted cargo carrier. Many years ago, I had developed my bug-out strategy. That included storing preps in foot lockers and plastic totes that could be easily stacked in my vehicle, after folding down both rows of back seats. In addition to that, I had also earmarked many of my non-electric tools for a potential bug-out. Some of these were tools that I still used fairly often. So I left them in my tool shed while placing yellow stickers on them, so that I could easily spot and gather them in a hurry. Other items that I would take included my inventory of freeze-dried food and clothing, shoes, etc. In order to maintain OPSEC, my firearms were placed in flexible covers, which were then placed in a very large golf bag cover with wheels. I also keep all of my important papers in a small file tote in a location where…