In this third and final episode of the Nomad Newbie series, we're diving deep into connections - how to make them, maintain them, and tips for getting connected from anywhere.
First, we cover the ins and outs of maintaining a reliable internet connection while living a nomadic lifestyle with Cherie and Chris of RV Mobile Internet Resource Center. We'll start by identifying your specific needs, whether you're looking to casually surf or need a robust solution for those high-bandwidth activities like video conferencing. They walk us through all the options, from Starlink and cellular plans, to hotspots (with a dedicated device our your cellphone), routers, signal boosters, and how you can build a redundant system to meet your needs.
The internet isn't the only connection we're exploring. We're going beyond the tech and diving into the social aspects of life on the road. In the latter part of our conversation, we chat with solo traveler Amber Baldwin about how this unique lifestyle opens the door to new friendships and a sense of community. Whether it's the spontaneous encounters on the road or the vibrant nomad groups and gatherings, tune in to discover how living nomadically may just make you more connected than your stationary life.
So come along and equip yourself with the knowledge to stay connected, both digitally and socially, no matter where the road takes you.
We hope you enjoyed the Nomad Newbie Series, with some of our top tips to help you ditch conventional life to hit the road or the waves. To hear more of the conversation with our guests, check out these episodes from the archive:
Episode 7 - How to Get WiFi When Traveling Full-Time with the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center
Episode 15 - Solo Van Life with Amber Baldwin: What is it Like Living Alone on the Road?
Links mentioned:
www.thewaywardhome.com/visible
https://www.thewaywardhome.com/visible-wireless-review/
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
In this third and final episode of the Nomad Newbie series, we're diving deep into connections - how to make them, maintain them, and tips for getting connected from anywhere.
First, we cover the ins and outs of maintaining a reliable internet connection while living a nomadic lifestyle with Cherie and Chris of RV Mobile Internet Resource Center. We'll start by identifying your specific needs, whether you're looking to casually surf or need a robust solution for those high-bandwidth activities like video conferencing. They walk us through all the options, from Starlink and cellular plans, to hotspots (with a dedicated device our your cellphone), routers, signal boosters, and how you can build a redundant system to meet your needs.
The internet isn't the only connection we're exploring. We're going beyond the tech and diving into the social aspects of life on the road. In the latter part of our conversation, we chat with solo traveler Amber Baldwin about how this unique lifestyle opens the door to new friendships and a sense of community. Whether it's the spontaneous encounters on the road or the vibrant nomad groups and gatherings, tune in to discover how living nomadically may just make you more connected than your stationary life.
So come along and equip yourself with the knowledge to stay connected, both digitally and socially, no matter where the road takes you.
We hope you enjoyed the Nomad Newbie Series, with some of our top tips to help you ditch conventional life to hit the road or the waves. To hear more of the conversation with our guests, check out these episodes from the archive:
Episode 7 - How to Get WiFi When Traveling Full-Time with the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center
Episode 15 - Solo Van Life with Amber Baldwin: What is it Like Living Alone on the Road?
Links mentioned:
www.thewaywardhome.com/visible
https://www.thewaywardhome.com/visible-wireless-review/
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
Are you curious just how to get Wi-Fi on the road? In this episode of the Wayward Home Podcast, I chat with the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center to get the DL on everything Wi-Fi data and internet. Today we're talking about how to get internet on the road, and I have the best people to talk about this here Cherie and Chris. With Mobile Internet Resource Center and TechnoMadia, where can somebody start with their internet research for van life?
Speaker 2:One of the most important things for anybody getting started is really understanding what their needs are and their tolerance for complexity. People who are geeks or who enjoy this sort of stuff can go completely to crazy town overkill having seven or eight connections going at once. Actually, I think we might have five going right now. Not everybody needs to go into super complex places depending on what their actual goals are. Understanding what you really need before diving in and throwing lots of money at is very, very important.
Speaker 3:The solution for someone who's working full time and doing a lot of interactive video sessions like this is going to be very different. This requires a lot of bandwidth. It requires a redundant, reliable solution for us to not have dropouts and cutouts. But someone who maybe for their job, just needs to check email, maybe answer some things, maybe draft a document or do some photo editing on their computer and then upload it in batches, it's a very different solution. Someone who just needs to do Netflix in the evening or Hulu in the evening is a very different solution than someone who is maybe going out into the middle of nowhere and needing to do very high bandwidth things.
Speaker 2:People who are teaching video classes or who are doing telehealth and stuff. That's really critical. You can't have a dropout while you're in the middle of teaching a 400 person class or you're consulting somebody about their cancer treatment. It's very, very different than a lot of other people who are like well, yeah, I have to do a Zoom once a week and I'm just passive, I'm watching it. I'm not that presenter.
Speaker 3:So it's very, very important to start with understanding what your needs are. If you go on YouTube or blogs or everything you read about someone else's solution, take into mind what they need and then take into account what you need.
Speaker 1:That's such good advice. I'm wondering for people who do do a lot of video calls like this how do you build that redundant system? Do you start with that router that you showed a minute ago?
Speaker 3:So right now we are broadcasting over Starlink, as well as Verizon, at&t, t-mobile, and we're also using Dish Network, which is the newest fourth carrier. We're bringing it all together on a Peplink router that has them all bonded together, so if any one of those has a dropout during this call, the others are right there to take over, so it should be seamless.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, and you guys do have some of the best internet of any of these interviews I've done, and that is why. So that's fantastic. And so what if someone just wants to use their phone as a hotspot? What are some carriers out there that you recommend for that?
Speaker 3:So the best plan right now for a smartphone only is visible. This is owned by Verizon. It is a subsidiary of Verizon. It's a prepaid plan. They have a $30 per month option and a $45 per month option. Both of those plans include unlimited hotspot data. That means you can set up your Wi-Fi network off of your smartphone and use like connect your laptop, connect your streaming devices to your smartphone. It's unlimited hotspot data off of your phone. It is capped at 5 megabit per second speed, so you're not going to get 4K video out of this, but 5 megabit per second is plenty for most things on the web and that is the best deal right now for those going for wanting a smartphone and it does give you access to Verizon's network.
Speaker 2:So it gives you a really great network everywhere. But it is the lowest priority user on Verizon's network, so people run into that and again, congested areas visible customers will have a very dismal data experience, whereas, like regular native Verizon customers will be streaming along or doing everything just fine. So you do have to balance the trade-offs, but it is a very good deal.
Speaker 3:But then all of the carriers have postpaid plans that you can get for your smartphone and they're all offering options from 40 gigabytes to 100 gigabytes of mobile hotspot data off of the smartphone at full speed, as well as all the unlimited data you can use on your hotspot on your phone itself.
Speaker 2:So definitely worth looking at those if you need the priority data and the plans all the time are changing so much so we do have a guy that is kept up. I think they updated almost every week on what the current most interesting plan options are for, whether it's for a hotspot or a phone or anything else. So people who need a lot of data that's at a mobile.
Speaker 3:Our remobileinternetcomplanspics and if you go to the front page of our website, it's linked all over that page, because that one changes a lot.
Speaker 1:Oh, what a fantastic resource. And so what are the benefits of having like a dedicated hotspot instead of just hotspotting on your phone?
Speaker 2:So a dedicated hotspot for one. It's separate from your phone, so your phone can still be doing its phone things. Your phone tends to fall asleep If you're using your phone as a hotspot. If you don't use it for a long time it will fall asleep. A dedicated hotspot like this can just be set, turned on, it's going and it is just making a Wi-Fi network that you connect whatever devices you want to to Some of them a lot of them actually now have Ethernet ports, so if you've got things that have want to take advantage of a wire connection, they could do that.
Speaker 3:Like it could plug right into your router. Even a home router. It doesn't even have to be a special mobile router.
Speaker 2:So it gives you a lot of flexibility there. They tend to perform pretty well compared to a phone. Because they're bigger, they have bigger physical antennas inside of them. Some of the hotspots actually this one does has a little antenna port so you can even hook up an outside external antenna or one that will suction cup into the window of your van, so that's actually very popular. The Netgear is a little Mimo antenna that can hook up to this.
Speaker 3:I mean the biggest thing is smartphones aren't designed for full-time hotspot usage. They can run down the batteries pretty quickly. What happens if we're using this as our hotspot here? And I just had to go for a walk, he's just lost his internet. So that's one consideration. But so if you need a lot of data usage, it's usually better to go with a dedicated hotspot device or a cellular embedded router.
Speaker 2:Or multiple people are using it too. A phone can work really well for just one person because you're in control of it and stuff. And then you know, upping the game to a cellular embedded router is kind of like a hotspot on steroids. It's got all the cellular antennas and stuff here, it's got ethernet and it's got Wi-Fi as WAN, so it can connect to an upstream campground or you know, a remote Wi-Fi network.
Speaker 2:And the nice thing about a cellular connected router is that you connect, have all your devices, just connect to the router, and then you tell the router what upstream connections you want to do. So if you've got a lot of Wi-Fi things in your household, in your van or whatnot some people we know have even their light bulbs are on Wi-Fi and so you don't want to keep having to change how they're connected you just tell them all. Go to the router, tell the router how to connect. The router might be connecting to this. It might be using its own cellular connection, it might be using ethernet to Starlink and then this is just kind of like your central conductor hub.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's all so interesting. I love it Because some people write to me and they're like I am required to be an ethernet for my job or they won't let me work remotely, so that would help solve their problem.
Speaker 3:I can. You need to really understand what the employer is meaning by a wired connection. Some of them are very specific. No, you cannot use cellular, you cannot use satellite, you cannot use Wi-Fi as your connection. You need to be a hardwired cable or DSL connection. Some they just want the computer not connected to Wi-Fi and that is fine Cause. Then you can just run an ethernet cable out of your hotspot device or your router and you've solved that, and then they don't care what is actually providing the internet connection to the router.
Speaker 2:And it could sometimes be just a don't ask, don't tell thing. It's like oh yeah, I've got an ethernet cable. It's upstream, it still might be Wi-Fi or cellular, but there's an ethernet cable.
Speaker 1:What are the benefits of actually plugging into that in the router instead of just using the Wi-Fi?
Speaker 3:So Wi-Fi is a wireless technology and it's short range and there's a lot of Wi-Fi noise around it. It's an unregulated spectrum, so when you're in a campground especially, you might have a lot of people that have a lot of Wi-Fi devices, whether they're a router.
Speaker 2:You have the campgrounds Wi-Fi network and things like that If you ever click on the little Wi-Fi, I kind of pull scamford networks and you see it goes like an entire page of different Wi-Fi networks. That's like a crowded bar and all those people are talking at the same time and it's really hard to communicate with it. You've got 50 networks all sharing the same, basically the same room.
Speaker 3:So what that means is your device maybe your laptop and your router or hotspot device are having a hard time negotiating a conversation and that can result in slower speeds. It can result in dropouts. So having an ethernet cable between your device and your router or your internet source gets around that. So it's the fastest connection that you're going to get and you're going to be able to optimize whatever that backhaul is for your internet connection.
Speaker 1:Cool, and before, you guys brought up something super interesting that people don't think about is where you put your hotspot or your phone in your van to get the best signal. If you could tell me a little about that.
Speaker 2:Fans are made of metal. Metal and signal does not go hand in hand.
Speaker 3:Some like our other RVing friends, or we're in a boat that's made of fiberglass. Fans are made of metal. They block signal, which means you want, if you don't have external antennas hooked up to your devices, have your smartphone, have your hotspot device near windows, get them in the front dashboard, get them on the side mirror. Don't melt them though.
Speaker 3:Don't melt them, don't put them in the sun. That's bad too. But what we do is we keep a soap dish, a little suction cup soap dish that you can buy in the department store, like go to Target, go to Amazon, and we put that in the window. We set our smartphone or our hotspot device in the window to keep it as unobstructed as possible.
Speaker 2:And you can do your own little speed test of just. It can be amazing the difference of sitting on the vans table or something that's just below the metal line versus just two feet away. But sitting in the window it can be a 10X difference in performance if you just run the speed test apps.
Speaker 3:But the best reason for going with a router, these are the antenna ports on here. You can get antennas that you put on the roof and you just screw into here. That gets around the issue all the time. You don't have to worry about what direction you're parked in. You always have an antenna on the roof of the van, outside of all that metal blocks, and then you're getting the best signal inside your van.
Speaker 1:Very cool. And, speaking of antennas, what's your opinion about the WeBoost system?
Speaker 2:Cell boosters yeah.
Speaker 3:So WeBoost is not an antenna so you can use it, but it's not the type that you would plug into a router. A WeBoost or other cellular booster setup is basically taking a single antenna. You notice that this one has one of those Wi-Fi one of those are cellular antennas.
Speaker 3:This one single modem has four antennas that feed it. It's working off a technology called MIMO. That's multiple in, multiple out. Basically it means it has four ears and when you experiment listen to some music right now or turn on this podcast, cover one ear what happens? Your sound and your brain is only hearing one signal. You unplug your ear, you're hearing with two ears. Same thing happens with signals and a cellular booster. What's happening is it's taking one voice. So basically you're plugging your ear and you're putting a megaphone into the other ear which is also broadcasting any other sound that's around, so any other noise. Sometimes, if you're very far away from the cellular tower, that amplification can actually be your best option. It's great also for upload capacity.
Speaker 2:Megaphoneing you back to the tower.
Speaker 3:Right, because the transmitter in a small device like a smartphone is it nearly as strong as what's on cellular tower transmitting back. So putting a megaphone back is great, so it can really help with upload speeds. If you're doing a broadcast, have large upload files, a cellular booster can help with that.
Speaker 2:The real core thing is like a cellular booster is just one funnel. It's one antenna, one amplifier one, everything like that, and they were useful back in the old 2G and early 3G days. But now all 4G devices and 5G devices use either two or four antennas. All 5G devices are four antennas. So you turn on a cell booster and you're forcing all the signal through that one single antenna. The 5G devices are basically being hobbled. They'll be running at a much slower speed. So the cell booster might help you make a voice phone call, it might help you get a little Lick-A-Signal in a remote area, but oftentimes for data, if data is your focus, a cell booster will actually slow you down when you turn it on. So number one tip for cell boosters could be useful to have in your van Never leave it on all the time and so use it only when you need it kind of thing, because it's actually hurting you more most of the time unless you really really need it.
Speaker 3:We used to say 80% of the time having external antenna directly attached to your router or your hotspot device is going to give you the best cellular performance Over a booster. Now I'd say 90% of the time. As 5G has come on, there are some cases we'll get to a campground. We're really remote. The antennas alone are not doing enough. We turn on the cell booster and we can get enough signal out of that one single antenna coming through to get online and check what we need to do, or no one else around us can get online. So there are times when it makes sense we keep one in our toy box, we keep one around, but we don't. They are you know they're a $500 investment, so you have to really consider is it worth $500 that you might use it once or twice a year?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so true, we probably should start talking about Starlink. I bet a lot of people are curious about Starlink.
Speaker 2:There's a new Starlink in motion version now.
Speaker 3:There's two Starlink dishes that are out right now. You've got the original one, which is the one that's just on the stand that you see a lot of people. Maybe they put it on a pole. That's the standard. They call it standard. Now, that one you can get with two different data plans. You can get it with the residential plan, which is meant for a fixed location, and then you can add portability to it. You can move your address around as you travel. That one gets you priority access when you're at your register Residential address.
Speaker 3:Or your service address. When you're not at your service address, you get what they call basic service. That is the same service. If you go direct with the RV plan, that one is always the basic service. These are both plans that are $135 per month. They now have a new dish, which is an in motion dish. It's one that you fix to the top of your roof. You can use it while you're driving around.
Speaker 2:It has no moving parts, but it's physically much bigger it can see more satellites while you're in motion.
Speaker 3:Now the standard dish the original one is $599. The new dish, the flat mount, Flat high performance. The in motion one is $2,500.
Speaker 2:That's a big price jump.
Speaker 3:Starlink has got a beautiful photo of a van with the Starlink dish on it. We've put it on our van. We have tested it in our van in motion. It's great. But the biggest problem well, there's several problems with that. High performance dish is number one. The only plan you can get with it is the RV plan, which gives you no priority access, so you're always going to be de-priorities over. So in congestive market you can get much slower speeds. We saw that with our residential dish. Versus the high performance situation, it gets slower speeds.
Speaker 2:And another catch of it is because you typically would permanently mount it on the top of a van. It doesn't really design to be moved around. It's again very subject to where you park and the trees around it and stuff. Because even though it can see a broader view of the sky, it still it can't see through trees, it can't see through obstructions, Whereas the Starlink standard comes with a 75 foot cable and you can get even a longer 150 foot cable and you can uncoil that and put the little tripod stand way out in the far side of your campground and where it can have a better view of the sky.
Speaker 3:Or hoisted up a pole.
Speaker 2:We keep a pole in our van to hoist it up, so that's much more flexible, but it's not really designed for in motion.
Speaker 3:And then the other issue with both of them is power usage. The standard dish, the smaller one, that one's going to burn about 40 to 60 watts of power.
Speaker 2:There's a lot for a lot. There's a lot. That means we're talking about solar powers that you have in a van.
Speaker 3:They're not in refrigerator size. Use the large in motion dish. That one's going to burn more like 80 to 110 watts of power. So it's a power hog. So if you're trying to boondock you're going to need a pretty large battery capacity without having to run a generator to keep it going and or you just be really disciplined about to turn off the Starlink when you don't need it.
Speaker 3:We made that mistake the other night. We're currently anchored. So basically I see Quill in a Boondocking for RVers in our boat the other night we totally forgot we had a glass or two of wine in the evening and we totally forgot to turn down Starlink overnight and we woke up in the morning to the low battery alarm, low battery alarm and we have a massive lithium battery. We have solar on this boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a cloudy day, we hadn't charged up and it was like, oh darn, we forgot to turn off Starlink.
Speaker 3:Drain our battery. No one was using it overnight. I mean, I'm pretty sure our cat was not streaming YouTube videos overnight watching it, it's definitely a consideration.
Speaker 2:It uses a lot more power than cellular. So to get one of those reasons where it's a great thing, we love having Starlink, we use it all the time, but it is not the be all, end all. We still use our cellular and have all these other things and just combine them in good ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to ask do you think it's maybe not quite the right time to purchase that high in motion, very expensive finish until they get it on the residential or other faster plan?
Speaker 3:I personally would love to see them offer an ability for anyone on an RV plan or in motion a mobile plan to be able to purchase or upgrade to priority data when it's available in the area they're at.
Speaker 2:And this is SpaceX we're talking about. So things change at a moment's notice, sometimes out of tweets notice. So anything to do with Starlink and SpaceX, check our latest guide. We've got keep it up to date at mobileinterainfocom, slash Starlink and you can go over there, because this stuff is changing very frequently and the plans might be different, the hardware might be different. The other things can be changing around by the time this airs, so keep close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad that you guys keep such a close eye on all this stuff. For us, it's very helpful, and you have your website and your YouTube channel where you track all these changes, so that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:It's an exciting time for connectivity. I mean between 5G networks are starting to get really interesting and good. There's far more starting to see more generous data plans. There's unlimited, fully good unlimited. It's still a little hard to come by in some ways, but between that and satellite and there's new stuff on the horizon, it's a good time to stay connected.
Speaker 3:It's a great time to stay connected, and I know something that those attending the summit will probably have questions about is third party resellers. You probably see a lot of advertising for companies like Nomad Internet, mobile Must-Have, hasem we work with Mobile Must-Have, with the gear. There's Bix Wireless and all these other third party resellers and basically these are companies that have somehow acquired data plans from the carriers. Sometimes they are Legit or more legit than others, and sometimes they are not. They might be like tablet plans in the background that they're using, or they found a way to get a plan to work on the carriers, and Our general advice for these plans is they are great, they're not. They work until they don't.
Speaker 3:We have never seen one of these plans last for much more than a couple years, sometimes sometimes a month. The carriers usually will shut them down, regardless of how legit or non legit they are. The reseller is not in control, the carrier is, and the carrier is the one who can say I am no longer honoring this plan, and they shut it down, sometimes without warning. We're also seeing, especially with AT&T, when they shut down one of these resellers is they are getting more and more aggressive about not only just shutting off the plan, but they are now blacklisting the devices from their network, which means that even if you go to AT&T and buy a legit plan directly with them, it won't work anymore.
Speaker 3:They will not activate that. Activate the sim card.
Speaker 2:So you've got a thousand dollar router that you were using a, basically a reseller plan. That's equivalent like buying something semi-legit at a flea market. At&t will now say well, no, we won't let you use your device on our network anymore, because we caught you with that semi legit device which?
Speaker 3:is. We think it's really bad because on AT&T, because you as a consumer. You went to a website that said this was a legit plan. You did not know. You have no reason to believe that it's not legit. It's the reseller that needs to be you. They should have. You know it's between them and the carrier, not you as the consumer, which is to me really bad business practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it but is that is something to keep in mind if you are buying kind of these like flea market plans. If it seems too good to be true, there are some that are ridiculously Cheap and because behind the scenes that the reseller is basically taking tablet plans and Changing serial numbers and like doing some kind of shady stuff sometimes on these plans and well yeah, they get caught eventually. So yeah, though, if it seems too good to be true, definitely have your backup plans in mind.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. So to be more legitimate, people should actually go to one of the main carriers. It sounds like all.
Speaker 3:All of the carriers are offering plans now in the 100-150 gigabyte range that can be used on routers and hotspot devices and if you get enough of those Along with Starlink or something like that, you can assemble enough data Most households we also get. How much data do I need a month if you're streaming some up few nights a week You're doing some zoom calls. Most households, if they keep their data usage to a reasonable level, can be perfectly happy in the two to 400 gigabyte per month range. Now you've got a heavy gamer, someone who's bit twerking or something like that. That's when you get into the terabytes and that's when it gets more difficult. But most of us are pretty darn happy in that in the 500 gigabyte below range and it's pretty easy these days to get that data Legit. You're gonna pay. You're gonna pay money. You're not gonna get this cheap.
Speaker 2:You know that this plan at $20 a month is awesome, yeah, and again is like and the dish is a legitimate plan, it's just they might take away their roaming to AT&T at some point.
Speaker 3:But there are ways to get it and that's what we're. Go check our topic data plans. There are options out there to assemble your, your setup, and you just need to pay attention to what data plans work on what types of devices. Some are like set to a specific device. You have to use the device the carrier sends you or the reseller sends you. Some can be used in any device you want, so you need to just pay attention to that. You know, before you go buy your hardware, look at what data plans are available for the hardware you want to use.
Speaker 1:That is very interesting. And just real quick, talking about third-party resellers, what are some of those main ones that you guys have seen out there that are advertising currently? I Try not to pay attention.
Speaker 3:We do keep a list. If you go to RV, mobile internet, comm, third party, 3rd party, we do keep a list. Our team updates that once a month. They go through and double check that they're still in business. That changes, that's the only thing we we promise is once a month. We have checked that vendors and business.
Speaker 2:No way means that they're legit and any shape way and because the good because some of these deals are really good Is that if you are going for these third parties, it's like great, you get the third party. One of this gives you a really cheap plan with a lot of data, but have your backup plan with a legit one, so that if that disappears and it's just gone one day and the company's selling you shut, shuts their doors, you've got something some other way online.
Speaker 3:But some of the ones you know that are do do really good diligence and they have good customer support. If something goes wrong, Mobile must have. They sell peplink gear. They do sell data plans for their Customers and we have seen those plans go away but they they deal with it well and get their customers like here's a new SIM card, you're back online the FMCA family motor coach association.
Speaker 3:They have a plan with AT&T. It is capped at 10 megabit per second or 25 megabit per second. You have to be a member of them and have like two years of membership but you can get a plan for like 60 bucks a month with them, which they also have a good track record of treating their members well. So if AT&T pulls the plan, at least you know the FMCA is gonna do everything they can to have your back.
Speaker 2:You know alternative. Yeah, on their side.
Speaker 3:I mean it's out of their control of AT&T, pulls the, pulls the plan on them. But and then there's, there's a whole bunch of others out there that have been around for years nomad enter. Well, yeah, kalecks Institute is one we like. They're a nonprofit and they actually have a legit A agreement contract. Yeah, it was part of Sprint. It got inherited by T-Mobile and it's for nonprofits and they can include it. With a membership to their organization, you get an unlimited hotspot on T-Mobile's network. You have to use it on their device that you buy with it, but you get an and it comes out to about 40 bucks a month, but you have to prepay for a year of membership.
Speaker 2:Because you're making a donation to the nonprofit and as a perk you're getting a hotspot with a year's worth of unlimited data. So it's kind of a loophole there, but it is a. You know, a legit old contract that goes way, way back. That is a, and they've stuck around forever.
Speaker 1:Sounds like there's a lot of options at a lot of price points for people, which is really good. Yes, yeah, some people are shocked and they're like you spend that much on internet because I have, you know, on a hotspot and the Starlink, and I'm like, well, yeah, I have to work and luckily our other expenses are lower, so it all counts Absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's the price of freedom. If you want to be able to still earn an income, it is. It is one of the costs and it is something that's always changing. The technology is advancing. You know the options that are available today. They'll all change in a month or two and you know. That's why we're here. We're tracking them. We do have a free newsletter that you can sign up for. We have monthly updates on everything we've covered.
Speaker 1:You guys are definitely the go-tos for anything mobile and you have a great website and YouTube channel, so hopefully people will go there and learn all they can, because it's freedom, like you said, like there's nothing better. I'm excited to be talking to Amber Baldwin, a woman who's been a nomad for five years, first in the class CRV, but mostly in her camper van. Amber is host of the YouTube channel StoryChasing, where you can follow along on her latest adventures. Since Amber runs a YouTube channel as her primary source of income, she often searches for boondocking spots based on phone signal.
Speaker 4:And I do that through apps. So Campendium is the big one for me. Campendium has a filter on there where you can see if it has like AT&T or Verizon, which are both of the hotspots that I have, and if the cell signals go in. And this is based on people who've stayed there to their reviews, and so if they are saying that, yeah, the cell signal is pretty good there, then I start looking at other factors like where's the location?
Speaker 4:Is it far away from the city or not far away from the city? Is it going to be conducive for the van? Because some places that you go to you might need four-wheel drive, which I don't have. So I look for that and then just make sure it's a beautiful, quiet spot, because at the end of the day, I mean I want to be able to go outside and put my camp chair and my table and go have breakfast outside, which is one of my favorite things to do and read a book and have my dog out there with me and relax and not hear like a bunch of people.
Speaker 1:Amber rarely stays in campgrounds enjoying the peace and quiet of only nature around her. Amber said when she first started RVing she was concerned she might be lonely on the road To be honest, like my social life is off the hook these days.
Speaker 4:I mean I have more community on the road than I ever had in a traditional sticks and bricks house. I think it's because, first of all, you know when you're traveling you meet people all along the way, whether they're RVing or not, you meet people along the way. Some of my really good friends now are people who actually live in homes my friends from New York, mark and Grant. I met them my very first year of RVing and we met because of our dogs. We were walking our dogs and I was in a park there in a park and we ended up being really good friends and I've stayed in their home. Then you meet full-time RVers and you just start building this community on the road with RVers and I think with RVers there's this instant camaraderie, almost because you have something in common instantly with RVing. I think we're all probably looking for similar things that freedom in life, exploration, quiet, peace, solitude. We just instantly can make connections.
Speaker 4:One of the places that I went to, besides just traveling and meeting people on the road, there's all kinds of groups that you can get involved with. One of the first ones that I got involved with was the Escapers group, which is an RVing kind of club community group. They have convergences and different types of events spread out around the United States. That was the first thing that I did and I've been able to make a lot of friends through that community, a lot of times the people that I connect with on the road. And then there's other types of communities.
Speaker 4:I'm in a van. You can connect a lot with people who are in similar situations in the van life community or even when I had my Winnebago, there was the Winnebago community. There's all different types of groups to connect with. You can be as social as you want to be or as alone as you want to be, whether you're introvert or extrovert. For me, being an introvert, that's the other thing is there's a healthy respect for that on the road, because there's a lot of us who are introverts. For me, being an introvert, I reach out by being by myself. Sometimes I'll be with a group of people, but then in a couple of weeks I need to go out by myself and hang out for a couple of days or sometimes even a month, and just be by myself.
Speaker 1:Amber thinks she's found more camaraderie on the road, partly because there's been a fundamental shift in how people interact in housing developments.
Speaker 4:Back in the old days. I'm doing air quotes when I say that Back in the old days, way before my time, they had built porches on the front of homes. Now a lot of the homes are built with your garage in the front and you're really in your backyard when you want to be outside. I feel like we've lost this community when you think about the traditional Sticks and Bricks lifestyle in a lot of ways about being in our community and being outside and connecting with others, because I swear it's that porch on the front. When they took that away, everything started changing. But we have that almost full time in our RVs where, because we live outside so much, we can build more community because we are outside and hanging out with other people. So I hope that makes sense.