Travelling Unplugged

I’ve just returned from a week in Northern California. My husband, son and I spent a couple of days in Monterey followed by several more days in Healdsburg, on the Russian River. This was not a far-flung trip for us as both destinations can easily be reached in a day’s driving (although perhaps I should not call seven hours in a car with a toddler easy). However, it was a vacation that was much needed and we were all looking forward to a change of scenery.

My husband and I both spend a lot of time online, both for personal and professional purposes. We have Blackberries, Twitter accounts and endless Facebook contacts. Normally, we spend our trips blogging, emailing and constantly keeping in touch with family, friends and co-workers. On this vacation, we decided to try something a little radical for us and unplug. As much as possible, I wanted to stay off the internet and the phone. I wanted to live in the present, read some books and really engage with my son. I actually left my computer at home, a decision that gave me heart palpitations for the first hour of the drive north. While we weren’t entirely successful in our quest (I did go online to get directions to a restaurant and briefly check Facebook status updates) we did a pretty good job of avoiding our technology for a time. I have to say, it was nice. Instead of blogging while the baby napped, I took walks around town, read a couple of novels I’ve been meaning to get to, and had some good conversations with my husband.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether live blogging your trips is actually conducive to meaningful travel. My opinion is that it really depends on the circumstance. When I travel alone, I completely enjoy blogging or journaling. I find that it helps me to absorb the experience and pass along something substantial about that experience to others. However, when traveling with a group of family or friends, I sense that blogging prevents me from taking part in some essential activities, be they social or individual. This hit home for me on a trip to Ireland a few years back, when I was sitting in in our room with my computer while my husband relaxed downstairs in front of a peat fire. By spending all that time on the computer, I was missing the opportunity to have another, more memorable experience. Now, I try to ask myself whether it’s really necessary to turn on the laptop. More often than not, I find that it isn’t.

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