The United States Post Office is an enigma all on its own. Unfortunately, we are highly dependant on it to conduct much of our business both personal and commercial. With the development of the internet the writing on the wall was finally seen by them that they needed to keep up to date or eventually go out of business. We still need them to conduct most of our business the old fashioned way. There are a lot of good things to be said about the old fashioned way and we need to keep it going. Electronic business is a coming wave of the future but don't shoot all the horses yet. The mail will get to you, eventually.

Most of us who have lived in the last 100 years know how the mail system is supposed to work. And, we must give credit to the improvements the post office has made over the years considering how much more mail they have to deal with these days. As a traveler when dealing with mail, patience is the key. Some mail is faster than others. Some areas have speedy deliveries but there still are many areas around the country that are not. Ask questions. Don't be too shy to ask how long mail should take to get where is supposed to go or when it supposed to arrive. Most of the time the postal officials can give you fairly accurate estimates, barring anthrax attacks and the like.

Forwarding Service

We have our mail forwarded to a local post office from our mail forwarding service all the time. ( Escapees ) Great service. Don't do extensive traveling without some reliable mail forwarding service. It is better to pay someone to do it than to have grandma do it because grandma may or may not remember where you said you are. And, if you are dealing with a large flow of regular mail it becomes a burdensome chore. Also, have the junk mail stopped or culled out by your service. You can waste a lot of money mailing around the Sears catalog all over the country. When in a place for more than a few days just have them forward it to the local post office to general delivery in your name. You can pick it up at your convenience. The Post Office will hold it up to 30 days before returning it to sender.

Cell Phones

Why the heck do you want that annoying thing waking you up in the middle of the night? Isn't that one of the things many of us hit the road to get away from? But, these days the need to stay in touch is almost a given whether traveling or not. For the moment a cell phone is the most common system we have immediately available to do so at a "reasonable" expense. Again, depending on your needs, the cell network will still provide the most consistent method to keep in touch. It offers not only voice but digital connection that allows our different gadgets to connect as well. If you plan to travel, especially full time, in your RV then a nation wide plan is the best way to go. You avoid excessive roaming and long distance charges by doing so. Voice mail is quite useful and can be used with or without a cell phone account too. On the other hand, it all again depends on what your needs for communication are. A prepaid phone just for very important calls can be the most economical approach. Also remember that all cell phones are now required to answer 911 emergency calls regardless of whether you have a cell service or not. An old cell phone that still works will be able to be used for emergencies at no further cost to you. That is as long as your emergency is a real emergency. Meaning, running out of beer and pizza during a football game on TV does not constitute a real emergency in the "authorities" eyes. 

Newer cell phones are moving their radio frequencies to all digital bands. That is great as long as you are consistently in the coverage area. Understand though that most of the country is not in the digital coverage areas yet so a full time RVer is best to be sure to get a phone that still covers multi-band frequencies both digital and analog. Analog coverage areas are still the widest coverage for most of the country so being able to connect to both is important if you want to stay connected. Those of you who want to connect your computers and other digital devices can use both bands but digital being much faster. For those who are looking for the fastest computer connection, they also have a digital network just for high bandwidth computer connections. It requires a PCM/CIA card with a cell phone antenna and software and a monthly service fee as with any cell phone company. It is very good high band width connection but is mostly limited to major metropolitan areas. 

Whichever way you choose to go, remember that if you are using your hand held phone to connect to your computer you will need a special cable to connect your phone to the computer. Be sure to get this cable as part of the package when you buy your phone or make sure your phone is the type that can connect to other devices. Also remember that there are other ways to get on the internet beside using a cell phone too.

Computer connections:

Many of us these days are using e-mail more and more. In fact, it has been our primary method of communication for quite some time now. We decide to use the two way satellite method. Having a full time high bandwidth internet connection was important to us for numerous reasons and today there are more and more companies offering this service. As a full timer, we soon learned that having a phone line for an internet connection was not as easy as we thought. Being boondockers, we also valued not having to go through someone else to do so. For the part-time RVer though, most campgrounds these days at least offer a regular phone line for patrons to use for a few minutes to download e-mail but surfing on line was pretty much a rare occurrence. Even borrowing a friend's private line was not practical for long internet connections as it tied up their line too long and didn't foster good relations for obvious reasons. The cell phone internet connection was good and most convenient when we were in an area with a good signal but that was less often as boondockers. So for us, we needed a consistent and convenient method of internet connection and two way satellite was the way to go. (See Satellite Internet for more details.)

For those who are mainly interested in just sending and receiving e-mail and don't want to bother carrying around a computer all the time, the is a device most commonly known as "Pocket Mail".  There are several manufacturers of pocket mail devices but the service is offered for a small yearly subscription that allows you to use just about any phone to connect and send/download your e-mail. You use and 800 number and log into your account number and wa-la! The typing keyboards are quite small so long e-mails are a chore but can be done with time and patience. This system works quite well and allows you to use the land line infrastructure traditional telephone system that is just about everywhere these days. It is relatively economical and works quite well. I would think it is the most cost efficient method for the full time traveler so far these days.

Radio:

Communications being important to us the longest existing technology to provide that is radio. Again, your needs will vary. Using cell phone and satellite methods is also radio. It is the frequencies and supporting infrastructure that makes them the most likely method these days but voice and data is still transmitted over lower bandwidth radio. To the average non-radio consumer a hand held walkie-talkie is probably the simplest example. The type of hand held marketed these days usually is a "Family Radio Service" band (FRS) sold in most department stores. These work quite well for local personal communications for less than 2 miles. Having a set of hand held FRS radios is a very useful tool for any RVer. Because of the increase in interest, more frequencies have been opened up in the General Radio Service (GRS) bands to allow for more traffic in local areas. This band requires registering with the FCC but does not require any testing for licensure. In days gone by, the old public Citizens Band (CB) was the most common short range radio in use. It is still used and useful especially for travelers on the road as it lends a great source of information on road conditions gleaned from listening to the chatter especially from truckers. If one wants to get more serious about using radio for communications, then HAM radio is the way to go. There are many more frequencies available that allow anywhere from local to worldwide communications from your home or RV. The basic HAM license does not require knowing Morse Code anymore so many people choose this as another good method of communicating over long distances independent from cell phone or other systems. Packet digital signals are used to send e-mail but surfing the internet is not yet possible for the average radio consumer. Ham also uses satellites to connect as well. HAM is independent from other radio systems and is the best way to reliably communicate in an emergency that may shut down cell phone or other systems.