Thats awesome! We have done 7 hops to get to the bay area from central CA. But like you said its VERY rare to get it successful. Ive seen meshcore do better, but its more setup for that sort of thing.
The issue is consistency. Since these devices run at max 1W, a "loud" device like an AC, refrigerator, or some lights can cause issues with the LoRa spectrum. Even sometimes in the same room, I see meshtastic stop working 1/10 times. and it goes to 9/10 if its over 500 ft with trees and such in the way. Just some observations.