We recently stopped at a Flying J truck stop for coffee and a potty break while driving the Honda CR-V from Kentucky to southern Alabama. It was late at night, but the building and fuel pumps were lit brightly. I noticed a strange looking box mounted on an exterior wall in the shadows and it had a flashing light so I walked over to get a better view. The box was black with rows and columns of square buttons with both numbers and letters. A cable looped down from the box in a U-shape and was connected to what appeared to be a small barbell, shaped just right to be held by a hand.

As I studied the strange box I read the flashing display and that shocked my brain into realizing what I was seeing. The display flashed “Insert 50 cents and Enter Phone Number to Make a Call.” By now some of you older folks realize what the box was - a pay telephone. Do you remember the last time you used a pay telephone? What happened to the old phone booths that stood on many corners and in front of service stations and shopping centers? When was the last time you opened the folding door, entered the booth, inserted a few coins in the slot and laid a hand full of coins on the shelf to be inserted if your call progressed too long. And there was always someone waiting outside the booth to use the phone so you hurried your call.

Times sure have changed. When we hit the road traveling fulltime in 1999 many people were still using pay phones, but we had heard about a new plan from AT&T called the One Rate Plan. It was not available in our old home town of Louisville, Kentucky or our new domicile town of Livingston, Texas, but was available at my son’s address in Minnesota. So I ordered an AT&T cell phone from Minnesota and for $69.95 a month we got 600 day time minutes. Later we were able to add 1000 night and weekend minutes for an additional $10 a month.

During those early years of fulltiming we connected our laptop to the internet by phone lines in campgrounds and were usually limited to certain hours and a limited amount of time online. If a campground didn’t offer a phone line we skipped that campground. Later I was able to connect to the internet with our cell phone with a very slow speed, but OK for doing email.

A few years ago I read about a new technology for connecting to the internet called WiFi. More and more businesses and campgrounds were installing WiFi and it looked like the exact thing fulltime travelers needed. At first we only found WiFi “hot-spots” about once a month, then they started popping up everywhere. Some were free and some had a charge - some had good signals and some caused me to swear, especially when I paid, but could not get a good connection.

About the same time we switched our cell phone to Verizon and our plan had 450 day time minutes and unlimited nights and weekends and only cost $39.95 a month. With the proper software and a cable we could connect to the internet at speeds faster than a landline, but due to limited daytime minutes doing email and surfing the internet was delayed until nights and weekends. We still have the same plan, but we recently updated our cell phone to the latest and greatest technology. Our new phone has so many features we are afraid to press buttons because we have no idea what would happen - snap a picture, buy unwanted stocks, play raunchy music, view the evening news, or heaven forbid, erase our address book.
 

After fighting with WiFi systems that don’t work as advertised, I decided to bite the bullet and spring for a WiFi system of my own. I bought a Sprint air card, WiFi router, booster antenna and an amplifier and our motorhome is now a WiFi zone with the internet available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In our eight years on the road we have seen many technology changes and we have gone from pay phones to cellular marvels more powerful than early computers, and from internet-by-phone-lines to instant access available all the time and at high speeds to boot. If technology keeps changing at this pace wonder where we’ll be in eight more years.