Story of a trip that sorta went South and could have gotten worse.
I've never experienced a truly survival situation but have had a couple that were interesting.
East and South of Corpus Christi, Texas is Padre Island. It is a 63 mile stretch of beach on a barrier island that runs down to Port Mansfield where a cut goes throughout he island. There are jetties down there and the fishing is extraordinary at times. The time to go is at low tide when you can run about 35 mph next to the water (even thought the speed limit on the island is 25). It would be idiocy to go down there in a two wheel drive vehicle. I had a 1997 Toyota T100 4WD at the time. #2 and #3 sons were with me on this trip. We had an ice chest packed and strapped to the trailer hitch rack. We got down the beach and found that the ice chest had bounced off somewhere in the 63 mile trip (that's the last time I used the damn trailer hitch rack. live and learn). So, no food for a two day trip. It's best to wait until the tide is out to run back as well. The sand on Padre Island is very fine and it is very hard to run in even with a light vehicle with 4WD. No biggie right? We'll catch fish and eat like kings. We caught some fish and I dry fried them and they were the best fish we'd had all day. We fished some that night and slept in the truck. There was a breeze and we slept well.
Next morning we broke out the surf rods and got them set. The boys were messing around on the beach and #2 asked, "Hey Dad, what is that?" pointing up the beach. There was a mist covering the beach about a mile away and there was not a breath of air moving. I looked at it for a minute and said, "Oh, that's just some mist rolling in off the Gulf."
About thirty min prior three trucks of guys had arrived and set up camp next to us, grabbed their rods and headed down the jetties. The gulf was calm and had a mirror finish.
Approximately one minute after my "Rolling Mist" remark, ….. the mist rolled right over the top of us at about 60 mph. It took the newly set up camp, tents, tables and anything that didn't have four tires on it, rolled it up and sent it toward Mexico. Our stuff was all in the truck. I broke the surf rods down and stuck them in the truck. We were getting sandblasted pretty good but we got in the truck and I started rolling into the wind. It blew like that for the entire 5 hours that it took us to make the 63 mile return trip at high tide in the loose sand. All along the way we were passing by our less prepared beach fishermen hunkered down behind their stuck trucks. The Toyota kept going.
We stopped at a survival place (Whataburger) as soon as we got back to the pavement and refueled on some Double Meat/Double Cheese Burgers. I attribute the fact that this situation did not turn into something worse for us to several things. First, I had a sound truck capable of the task it was asked to do. It was in good repair and in addition to the full tank of gas I had starting out, I had two 5 gal cans of extra gas. I also had two 5 gal cans of water. Although we didn't have to use them, we still had them. We were traveling light. We were ready to move as soon as things went badly and the fact that we got rolling and could keep rolling got us out of the jamb. My biggest mistake was not having the food secured properly. That never happened again. We did have to make a pit stop on the way and it gave a whole new meaning to Pissin in the wind. Even in that short time the sand was piling up around the wheels and it took a second or two to break out and get moving again.
That was how I handled the survival part of our trip. I think a bunch of other guys handled theirs by spending the next day digging their trucks out of the sand, being thirsty and trying to get their engines started.
When we got back, there was sand in everything. I had three big Penn surf reels and they were full of sand, on the inside. I cannot imagine how they filled the guts of those reels with sand. There was a cup of sand on the inside of my air cleaner but none past the filter. All my CV joints were intact and an oil change showed no sand in the oil. I put another 100K miles on that truck and gave it to #1 son for a work truck. It's still going.
That was at least 15 years ago and whenever one of my sons asks me something and I give a sage type answer, one of the other smartasses will pipe up and say, "Yeah, just some mist rolling in off the Gulf".
Alan
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