If you are near, or on the water, at all you might consider marine band radios (vhf, hfssb, mfssb).


I am not sure what licenses or restrictions apply to them where you are.
I know that if you are on the water in Canada they want you to have marine vhf, so the license is very easy to get and I knew several people who relied on them for emergency use along the BC coast.This was even if they were on the beach.
Marine VHF gives you the marine weather too.

I don't think you even need a license in the States unless you travel into foreign waters. Not sure, but it is easy to check.

If you look through the Icom site you might get some ideas.
http://www.icomamerica.com/default.aspx
Some of the higher end Icom land mobile sets include voice scrambling, if that is of any interest to you.

There are a lot of other options that might even include HAM.
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May set off to explore without any sense of direction or how to return.