Photo by Britne Hammons Artist Ed Pickett carefully crafts a section of a kneeling solider that will be bronzed and on display at the VZC Veterans Memorial once finished.

Let’s say you’ve had to evacuate from your home, and you have no place to go. What you do have is a truck, car, or van. In an emergency, a truck, car, or van makes a dandy temporary shelter!

The doors are watertight, and they lock. You have soft seats for sleeping, or you can bed down on the van floor or pickup bed. There’s a good radio to find out the progress of emergency recovery. At night, there are inside lights that could be used for a while. The cigarette lighter can be used to start an outdoor fire. You have a separate storage area in the trunk, behind the seats, or in the pickup bed. You could even run the heater several times at night, being careful about how much gasoline you have left and opening windows partially in case your heater brings in exhaust fumes.

After camping in a tent for a quarter century, I look at camping in a vehicle as a wonderful luxury. Imagine, a waterproof tent that’s off the ground and has wheels! But is it ideal? Nope! There’s no water. There’s no kitchen stove. There’s no potty. There’s no shower.

Living in a vehicle, you can carry 3 one-gallon jugs of water per person for three days, or 6 two-liter jugs. You can buy bottled water, but that’s expensive. Refilling the jugs from a safe fountain or tap works best for me. I’ve boiled water to sterilize it, though that takes time and requires fuel for the kitchen stove.

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