Re-Connected

We are cautiously optimistic that we may be able to start blogging again, due to recently switching Alea's phone to Verizon Wireless.  We won't know for certain until we hit the road again in a few days, for the second leg of this year's journey.

At Akeley, MN.

At Bemidji, MN

The primary reason that we stopped blogging was a lack of internet connectivity in the rural areas of the west (which we were traveling through this past spring), though there were also some other considerations.  We were getting cell service through Republic Wireless, which we have used for a couple of years now.  This year the service went "native" and we got new phones that could be used as hotspots.  That allowed us to drop our AT&T MiFi, which saved us some money.  But our experience over the past three months was abysmal, and Republic Wireless didn't seem very sympathetic to our plight.  

To give a sense of just how bad our cell reception was this past spring, here are a few examples:

1. One Friday evening we drove into Klamath Falls, OR to do some grocery shopping.  The only reception we got was 3G roaming (enough to send a text message).  By chance, we returned to Klamath Falls the very next day by the exact same route, but this time we had four bars of LTE!  What is THAT all about??
2. In May we had stayed near Vale, OR and had strong LTE coverage.  We returned a few weeks later, but could only get 3G roaming.  Huh??
3. We rolled into Rigby, ID and camped less than a half mile from five different cell towers.  No service.  Forty five minutes to an hour later, and we had a strong LTE signal!  How many towns did we drive through like that??  What's the deal??
4. For one two and a half week period, we only had 3G roaming service - just enough to send out a text, with no access to data.  During that period, Sprint's network showed that we used nearly a gigabyte of data, and before the end of the billing period we had exceeded our data cap.  However, our phone's tracking of our data use showed that we had nearly a full gigabyte of unused data.  That was when we decided that enough was enough.

Republic explained to us that there are basically four cell networks in the U.S.: two CDMA networks (Verizon and Sprint), and two GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile).  Republic piggybacks on either Sprint or T-Mobile.  Our old phones were on the GSM network (T-Mobile), while our new phones were on the CDMA network (Sprint).  They suggested that we could BUY a GSM sim chips for our phones and thus switch carriers (we were considering having one CDMA phone and one GSM phone).  HELLO??  Are you listening?  We're telling you our service has sucked and we aren't too happy about it, and your solution is to reach into our wallet?  And worse yet, we would have to navigate their website on our own to make this purchase (the process was WAY more complicated than simply dropping a sim card in a shopping basket)?  Needless to say, we opted instead to cancel service on Alea's phone.

We have resisted signing up with Verizon in the past, as phones aren't that important to our lives and Verizon tends to be more expensive than everyone else.  But they also work far better in the Western U.S., and camping is very affordable there.  So in essence we are using money that we save camping in the west to offset the added cost of Verizon service.  Having one Verizon line and one Republic line works out about the same as the two Republic lines and the AT&T MiFi that we had last year, and we are able to eliminate the MiFi.  And with unlimited data, we aren't nervously watching our data usage at the end of each billing cycle, hoping that we won't have to pay for extra data.  That makes our life simpler, which is perhaps the best justification for the added cost.

We plan on beginning the second leg of this year's journey in Havre, MT in a few days.  Going forward, we are hoping that we won't be out of cell coverage for more than a few days at a time, which would likely be often enough to continue blogging.  Time will tell.

Captain Joe and Alea.

Jean, Ann and Joe.

We have spent the past week with Alea's siblings at Joe's Lodge, just east of Bemidji.  The weather has mostly been great, and we have managed to avoid the high humidity that can take hold around here in the peak of the summer.  We have had a great time: seeing some sights, doing some boating and dining out a lot.  But it is once again time to resume our wanderings and burn off some of the excess calories...