Sun­day morn­ing I got up a lit­tle ear­ly, brewed my pot of cof­fee, show­ered, and out the door I went to north­west­ern NJ to vis­it  a friend I have not seen in sev­er­al months.  We were head­ing to PA to pick up some addi­tion­al ammo.  My bud­dy want­ed to pay less than the cost of ammo in NJ to head to the range with.  I just hap­pen to know a cou­ple places to go for that.  So off I go to north­west­ern NJ, or so i thought…  It start­ed to rain yes­ter­day after­noon, and last night it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained…  It rained hard.  I went to sleep at 11:30 and it was still rain­ing hard after about nine hours.  I’m not sure when it stopped, but I do know it caused me some issues…

Fast for­ward to the ride… I go to get on I‑80 West, and two of the three lanes are closed down.  Most like­ly because of flood­ing, con­struc­tion, or both.  I’m going with both.  So I hit the detour but­ton on my GPS.  It routes me onto 46 West, and traf­fic seems to be flow­ing… I eas­i­ly slide onto 23 north.… Until The whole road was shut down… Why?  What?  More flood­ed roads.  Hmmm…  Hit detour on the GPS again.  This time I got lucky enough that it rout­ed me though many of the back roads of NJ.  Then it hit me, “Oh $#!^… These were two of my Bug Out routes…  Wait, if rain can shut down my Bug Out routes, then what would a larg­er nat­ur­al or man made dis­as­ter do to them?  Oh man… Once again I have to rethink rout­ing to the BOL…

I have tak­en both these routes in the past, how­ev­er, only in good weath­er.  Now I feel like I need to seri­ous­ly rethink the routes.  I urge you to take a look at your own Bug Out routes and test them dur­ing good weath­er and bad.…