I really like my iPhone. It’s like carrying a smaller version of my iPad and parts of my computer with me all the time, keeping info I need right at hand. I really didn’t want to put it away for the winter and get a new phone in the US and then again in Mexico. Surely it was possible to get a SIM card in each country while maintaining all my phone settings?

I called SaskTel and they said I could unlock my phone for $50. I made sure that unlocking the phone meant that I could use the phone with SIM cards from carriers in other countries. Yup, that’s exactly what unlocking does. I’m still newish to this whole cell phone thing, okay? Don’t look at me like that. 😀

I got to Billings last night and went to a Walmart because I knew that they sell pay as you go service and that would likely be the cheapest and easiest option. The boy who served me was obviously in the right department. I asked for a pay as you go service for my iPhone and he ran me through a battery of questions to make sure the pay as you go service they sell, ‘GoPhone’ from AT&T would work with my SaskTel iPhone, including that I have a GSM phone. He handled my phone for a bit, pulled up a few screens, and confirmed that GoPhone would work for me. I had a choice of $40 for limited talk and text and 1GB of data, or $60 for unlimited talk in the US, unlimited text to/from Canada and Mexico, and 2.5GB of data. Pricey, but it is a pay as you go service! I went for the $60 option, plus $10 for the SIM card.

When I got back to my truck, I realised that I had forgotten to bring Apple’s super high tech (not) iPhone paperclip for accessing the SIM card! I was tired and decided to go back to Walmart in the morning to ask the service desk for a paperclip. But in the middle of the night, I had an epiphany. An earring worked great at opening up the little SIM drawer. 😀

Setting up the GoPhone SIM was pretty simple, but I don’t know if it can be done without a computer and internet access. I inserted the SIM card and was told to connect to iTunes. I did and got an ‘unlock successful!’ message (so far, so good!).  I then went online to activate the SIM card and get a US phone number. I then had to reboot the phone. After that, I was able to continue in the online screens to enter the PIN number for my pay as you go top up card. I was not able to do that through the phone for some reason.

I do need to put my SaskTel card back into the phone so I can call them toll free to suspend my account, but research tells me that I can carefully go back and forth between registered SIMS without an fuss. We shall see…

That’s it! I now have US service, enough data to Netflix in the evenings, and I can text my mother in Canada every so often to let her know I didn’t get eaten by Bigfoot. 😀

I’m off to get an oil change, and then going to get closer to Old Faithful so I don’t have a huge drive tomorrow and can enjoy an outdoorsy day. At this point, I have no intention of doing any more super long days like I did yesterday. I’m in no rush.

The truck was super comfy last night and I slept well! I will sleep in the truck the next two nights as long as the weather holds. I was actually too warm last night and had to throw off blankets! I will be getting a hotel for the weekend, though. I need to do some Priceline.com research to find something under $50 a night. Since I don’t have a preferred city location for the hotel, just something between Old Faithful and Springdale, UT, that shouldn’t be hard. I found the perfect hotel in Pocatello for $54 a night base price, so I’ll probably start bidding in that area as I might be able to get something under $40. I love Priceline!