What I love about it: 2 days ago, I had my phone in my hand, and was punching in the numbers to call an RV park in Texarkana, TX to make a reservation. As I am doing this, Paul says “Hey, there is a commercial on TV for the Louisiana State Fair- do a quick google and check it out, will you?” So I do a quick “google” and I discover that the State Fair is in progress, and it’s in Shreveport, LA, a mere 130 miles from our current location. After finding an RV park that has room for us, the decision was made, so, here we are in Shreveport, LA.
I am pretty excited about being here. There is a Rodeo on Saturday night, and since I’ve never been to one, it’s been high on my list of Wants. We now have box seat tickets to tonight’s rodeo. Sweet! The other bonus is that by being stationary in a commercial park, I was able to get something shipped to me here- which leads me to what I (used to) hate about this lifestyle:
What I hate about it: Lack of internet. This is one of the biggest issues that full time RVers have to address in some way. There are many options, some cheap and somewhat unreliable, and some pretty expensive (satellite Internet), with several options in between. Up to this point, Paul and I have chosen to rely mostly on campground Wi-Fi systems, and when that is unavailable, we tether to my AT&T cell phone. Lately that’s been a problem because apparently I have dropped my phone too many times and the connections are too loose to use to connect it to the PC. Add to that the fact that AT&T coverage is not what we would like it to be, and my frustration level increases dramatically. AND, the speed of campground Wi-Fi systems slows to a painful crawl as more people try to use it.
As I mentioned in my last post, at Devil’s Den we had neither cell coverage,nor internet. Not that I think Verizon is perfect, but I do believe it’s much better than AT&T. Devil’s Den was last straw for me. I got on the phone with my personal Verizon Wireless Sales Consultant (who I have been reviewing options with for several months) and told him to ship my new IPAD II!
The Ipad solves several frustrations for me. Within hours of receiving it, I had activated a data plan for it through Verizon. So, last night when the campground Wi-fi slowed to 1mbps, I switched over to my personal Verizon plan and I was back in business! The other perk is that I will have a better internet connection to do research, as we travel down the road. No longer will I have to rely on the small screen on my phone.And so begins our migration over to Verizon and Apple.
Oh look at you with your new technology! You do realise we now all expect much more regular updates from you as you have no excuses!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis comes from a very jealous fellow internet sufferer who has been waiting all morning for the camp office to open up and reset the network adaptor so I could get on to the network!!!!
I love the flexibility too. We've not had too many issues with internet though probably because we never planned on using park wifi. We already had an aircard when we started out. We just added the Cradlepoint router so both of us could use it at the same time.
ReplyDeleteWe have pretty good luck with Verizon. It, too, gets really slow when everybody gets down south and starts using the same tower but a booster helps that out. Good luck with the IPAD.
ReplyDeleteImagine this Sue, we have to have two, one for Canada and one for the US. We find that our own systems are usually quite a bit faster than the park Wi Fi's.
ReplyDeleteI now use my iPad II with Verizon for so much Dave thinks I should sell my computer. I can't believe how handy this gadget is.
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