I got home about 2 and the power had just come back on. Very unusual to be out at all much less 12 hours.
Spent all morning talking about generators, cords, plugs, panels ad nauseum. What I would say is if you wait until there's an emergency to go looking you're screwed. I don't want to hear about or talk about suicide plugs. You want to do that go ahead just leave me out of it. My last name isn't Kevorkian. If you don't know what a neutral is you should, at least if you want to stick your fingers in the wires.
The cord & plug route has been the way to go for me as this happens infrequently, but it is a p.i.t.a. In a couple of weeks when the shelves are restocked I think I have my answer. Burying UF wire in this area means the trench has to be minimum 40" deep. It's over 60' long. Ungood. I can only get a 250' roll of 10/3 UF and that's $258.
But in conduit it only has to be 18" deep.
A 100' roll of #10 AWG THHN stranded is about $30 so I need 4 rolls; black, red, white, green. 70' of plastic pipe and connectors won't even cost $25. Have to check the volume fill for individual conductors but it'll be 3/4" or 1" pipe. I can get that into my garage and then run Romex or MCLite 10/3 over to my panel. I might leave it near the panel in a junction box and come up with a L14-30 arrangement of socket cap + plug + 10/4 SJOOW cord to a double pole breaker. I'd still prefer not to leave anything permanently connected. I think if I do all that the cost would be about the same as just buying the UF cable itself, and that includes the cost of a mechanical generator lockout.
I have forgotten more about this stuff than most people I encounter have ever known. You gotta dig the lingo, man. I met so many nitwits today with, shall we say, creative theories on the topic.