Question about somehow selecting a different cell network

[Robinsaneyo]

I have an HTC Incredible with Verizon. I have absolutely no reception at my place unless I stand by a window, then I can possibly make a call which will most likely drop after a few minutes. The other day, I had to make a 911 call, in which my phone apparently went into roaming mode while I made the call (in which I had 3-5 bars). After I was done with the 911 call, my phone stayed in the roaming network (as indicated by the little triangle above the reception bars) and I still had very good reception in my apartment and could actually make and receive calls with no drops.

At the time, I thought I was getting charged extra for using roaming, so I went into Settings somewhere and told the phone to only use the "home network" in which the phone went back to having little to no reception. I remembered a while ago that Verizon at some point quietly introduced free roaming (meaning the roaming minutes are charged the same as regular minutes). I went to Verizon's site to try and verify this, but couldn't really find anything. I contacted Verizon support using the chat, and they said that as long as I had the Nationwide Plan that the roaming minutes were charged the same as regular minutes (even with the triangle above the reception bars).

My current problem is I cannot seem to get back onto that network at all, even when having the phone automatically find and connect to the network rather than only using home. I looked around but I couldn't find anything pertaining specifically to my phone. I've tried downloading an app that would supposedly only tell the phone to connect to a roaming network, but my phone would just show an 'x' for reception.

Is there any way that the phone can show a list of available networks and let me manually connect to one (even if it means I have to root my phone)?