Meshtastic

Hello again, so far my mesh has been great as a neighborhood range gimmic (no harm, just bummed there aren't more adopters locally), but I'm hoping to go further. Turns out a neighboring town has a more extensive mesh than my own. Aside from convincing a bunch of people in between to set up meshtastic, could I go and set up a yagi and point it towards a known node for example? I am atop a hill and likey have LOS, but even if I get a signal, how should this be repeated if not by another node close to the yagi? Or rethink this entirely? Thank you all in advance