I don’t recall the current permitted specs for GMRS... but I DO remember the last time I looked at them, I thought that IF a person had a decent antenna at 50 to 100 feet above the rest of the terrain, that you could quite possibly cover 10 miles or more. Also... I “think” the GMRS license fee recently came down to $35.
One thing about GMRS is that it operates entirely well within the UHF (70cm) freq range. It’s a LOT more susceptible to weather... fog, mixed precipitation, snow... etc.
But I understand that a lot of people get GOOD service from GMRS, and there are some nice radios being sold which are type certified for GMRS. I’m sure you’ll get some level of usefulness out of it. :-)
Just paid $70 for gmrs license last week.