Revisiting Favorite Wild Places

I spent a couple of weeks in September wandering around the Southwest by motorcycle, mostly camping in national forests and other public lands, which there is no shortage of in this region.  Many of the places I wanted to revisit were favorite areas I've done lots of backpacking and exploring in, such as the San Juan mountains of southern Colorado and the Blue Range Primitive area of southeastern Arizona.  These are also areas discussed as bug out locations in my book: Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It's Too Late.

Riding the Suzuki Vstrom 650, I was able to leave the pavement for long stretches of exploring unpaved forest service roads.  A lighter, more off-road capable bike would be e even better once there, of course, but with all the highway and interstate riding to do the 3700-mile trip out and back from Mississippi, the DL650 was a good compromise.  I plan to post a more detailed account of the trip with more photos on my main website soon, but wanted to share a couple of photos here too.  Those of you living out West are fortunate to have access to so much publicly accessible wild land for exploring, camping, hunting and in the worst-case, as potential bug-out locations.

Southwestern Colorado near the San Juan Range

Blue Range Primitive Area, Arizona

An another note, before I left on the trip I did an interview with Morry Baines, who runs a multitool review site and has been working on a round-up of interviews with various survival authors and others with questions such as "What is the most useful tool for the outdoors?"  You can read the answers including mine and those of some of my fellow survival authors including Jim Cobb, Bernie Carr and others here: http://bestmultitoolkit.com/expert-roundup/most-useful-tool-outdoors/   The full interview that I did is here: http://bestmultitoolkit.com/interviews/scott-williams-bugoutsurvival-com/

Morry also wrote an article on multitools aimed specifically at boaters, and since much of my writing has to do with bugging out by boat, here is the direct link to that: http://bestmultitoolkit.com/knowledgebase/multi-tool-boat-essential-tips/

Also, don't forget that I'm giving away a free copy of Refuge After the Collapse (Book II of The Pulse  Series) every Friday of this month to subscribers to my newsletter.  Last Friday's winner was Wayne in Fort Edward, NY.  Today's winner will receive notification through the newsletter list, and will be announced to the rest of the list later today or tomorrow.  There are three more Fridays in this month, so if you haven't won a copy yet, hang in there, you've still got a chance.

Book Giveaway Winners

This is a repost from my main website:

Just an update to announce that the winners have been selected  for the ten  signed copies of Refuge that I offered to those signing up for my author newsletter.  If your email address was chosen, you should have received a notification through the newsletter.  Of the ten winners, I have received a reply back from eight and books have been mailed out to those eight winners.  I'm still waiting to hear back from the other two, so check your spam folders and inboxes carefully to make sure you didn't overlook the notification, which should show up as an email from my address: scott (at) scottbwilliams.com

The eight winners who should receive their books soon are:

Khris - St. Petersburg, FL, David - Southport, FL, Gary - Mohnton, PA, Beverly - Kosiusko, MS, Kathryn - Canton, MO, Vivian - Mill Creek, WA, Devon - Ludington, MI and John - Kirksville, MO.

I will send out another direct email to the other two chosen winners soon and if no response after a few days, will select two alternate winners.

For the rest of you who have signed up for my newsletter, thank you for subscribing, and I want to make sure you have another chance at winning a copy of Refuge.  To that end, I will be giving away one free copy at random every Friday of this month from among my subscriber list.  Stay tuned as well to the newsletter updates for an announcement of my next book, which is in progress now and coming soon.

Refuge is available on Amazon and in bookstores now and I've gotten great feedback on it, including hearing back from some of the giveaway winners that they've already purchased and read it before learning they had won.  Review copies from the publisher are late going out as has happened upon the release of my last two books, so if you're on one of those lists to receive one, I apologize for the delay and have word that they will be shipped out this week if not already.