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It's too bad you started with that radio. It is cheap, and very difficult to use. It's not a bad radio, just not user friendly, especially to a newb.

There are two bands of frequencies, 136-174 and 400-480 MHz. Both are essentially line of sight, so unless you get up high, or the transmitter is up high that you are listening to, the range is going to be relatively short. You should look up the repeater pairs in your area. Here is a list of Texas repeaters in the 144-148 Mhz band (called 2 meters) as well as the 450 Mhz band. Find one in your area, tune that frequency and see if you hear anything. You may not because you only hear what others are transmitting, and that is just conversation, and not all the time. Some are dormant for days.

The best thing is to befriend a ham who is into this stuff to show you the ropes, and there are a great many. You'll need to know this stuff anyway.