The vastness of the cosmos is always a cool thing to dream about. The galaxies and stars are so many and scattered so widely that there is little chance of conventional travel between all but a very few. The chances are that there is life based on dramatically different chemistries, some of the beings sophisticated, the overwhelming majority of them very simple. Humble, resourceful beings like lichens are probably immensely more common than obviously conscious beings like ourselves. We may never know the answers, because the distances are already a huge barrier and growing larger. Even if we manage to relocate to a series of long lived red dwarf systems after the Sun conks out, we may never meet other beings where communication is even a possibility. The stelliferous period of the universe if often estimated at about 100 trillion years. That's a long time to be alone, but alone we may be; if other sentient beings can't be reached, does it really matter if they are there? All the more reason to make the most of our own species, we may never have anyone else for company.

The Drake Equation deals with this. For my money, particularly with the number of galaxies in the universe, I can't imagine there not being life elsewhere.

[seti.org]

Where there is water there is life. Bacteria, algae, virus', etc. Something we can not classify. Single cell or less. Single cell in masses. Finding a nice moist warm host. Perish the thought.

There has been communication with other species through sign language. The case of Koko the gorilla is well known.

/sarcasm on Considering how hard it can be to have an intellectual conversation with other humans on earth, I would say it's time to add another term to the Drake equation. S°=stupidity of the observer. That would solve the Ole Fermi paradox by itself. If we are not smart enough as a species to understand what we are seeing the universe would look mighty empty. We could all stop worrying about great filters and extinction level events, wipe the drool from our chins and party down.
/sarcasm off

Considering the earth was inhabited by only single celled organisms for some 3 billion years, and took the next billion to evolve a life form intelligent enough to ask the questions you are contemplating - and the idea has only been around for a matter of hundreds of years - the chances of life intelligent enough to communicate with human earthlings is far more remote than if life took hold on another planet and is somewhere in the billions of years of their own evolution. I think it's awfully likely life exists elsewhere in the universe, but what the stage of development of that life is difficult to assess.

They've probably already checked us out and left shaking their heads.

And, failing to find intelligent life on Earth, their gaze drifted skywards ...

Personally I'm not in any doubt that there's plenty more life out there. The number of planets you hinted at makes that obvious to me. But any contact between us and them is inconceivable with present technology, and in any future we can imagine in a realistic way. The distances are too great, as are the number of potential destinations. Imagine us designing suitable transport for a long term voyage and successfully, against the odds, getting our great (X a few hundred or thousand) grandchildren to an inhabited planetary system. Those arriving there wouldn't be homo sapiens, they'd be something evolved from us. Small changes in gravitation, air conditioning, dietary restrictions and the duration of separation would see to that, if occasional exposure to excess radiation didn't. There's also the problem of intelligence, and not just ours! The inhabitants they encountered would in all likelihood be best described as microbe-like or similar, or perhaps some basic fungus etc. Any evolutionary development into something along the lines of a mammal, fish, bird etc is arguably much less probable. More advanced life forms on earth are relatively unsuccessful, compared to say a simple organism capable of unwittingly preparing an oxygen rich environment before our arrival. I've a suspicion that intelligence isn't a particularly useful (and therefore repeatedly co-evolving) survival tool in the long term, and much more likely to change the environment for worse, but that's another conversation. But with the size of the universe there will surely be some comparable intelligence out there somewhere. Maybe they've already visited here in the past, noted the early solar system coalescing into some rocky planets suitable for a far future check up, and then went extinct 3 billion years later. All in all I think we've more chance of finding a needle in a haystack the size of the sun and discovering it's pointing precisely at another needle in the next haystack.

Are we alone? Most likely we are not. I still doubt we are going to make any contact soon.

At present, the closet known galaxy to the Milky Way is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy - aka. the Canis Major Overdensity. This stellar formation is about 42,000 light years away.

Imagine traveling at one tenth the speed of light. How many years will a one-way trip take?

“Beam me there, Scotty.”

It is what it is and I don't give it much thought.

Who says alien life forms want to be "found"???
If I was an alien, I wouldn't have anything to do with these backwards, primitive Earth creatures!

My biggest regret is that I won't be here when we do find them. I do not think we are alone. The very fact of our existence on this planet is evidence that life exists in the universe and most likely exists elsewhere. By the time that we connect with them we will have evolved both physically and technologically to the point we may not have that big of an issue communicating.

It will be awesome, sadly, I won't be here.

Quite possible.......with technology evolving and constantly changing, one day we may find out. It will be interesting.

Well, so far, there's no proof of existence of extraterrestrial life. If exists and contact is made, we will have to see how it goes.