I’ve tried them on snowmobile trails. With the vegetation the range was about a mile.

Range can be 100+ miles though if you can establish line of sight. Depending on the scenario, a high elevation repeater could give several mobile devices pretty significant range.

Range is line of sight. If you can see it, even if 100 miles away, odds are it'll work. Seattle area has one of the better networks for MeshCore. Tacoma to Vancouver BC is the range for semi reliable messaging

Don't the different frequency bands change that a lot? iirc these are all lower frequency so they can cut through foliage better than say 5ghz wi-fi

Yes you can get decent reception inside buildings. It operates in the 915mhz band. Similar frequencies to old school pagers. Lora is an interesting RF protocol, it has really good properties for operating below the noise floor.