I love this idea. This should be one of the hobbies I consider!
Get your HAM license just for fun and buy a $40 Baeofeng. It's easy.
During the Snowpocalypse I was able to find gasoline for my Parents' generator only because I could talk on the local repeaters and see where availability was located.
Houston has many repeaters:
https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/location_search.php?state_id=48&type=city&loc=Houston
Discussion
It's fun. Get a couple of Baofengs from Amazon. Use Chirp to program in the GMRS frequencies. Set them to 5 watts for talking car-to-car during family trips, and 1 watt to chat around the house.
We love them while camping and biking at state parks.
After you learn the basics, start listening to the HAM repeaters. Then get your ticket so you can chat on them.