If you sleep with your phone next to the bed and check it before the shower – you’re as addicted as someone who needs a smoke before putting her feet on the floor.
If your family refers to you only as “the forehead that peeks out from above the laptop monitor”, you’re in need of this information.
It’s time to unplug and recharge.
In San Diego, we have the coast and the mountains but the county is compact enough that you’re really not too far away.
To truly unplug, you need to go where there are no bars on your phone, where WiFi stickers aren’t on every storefront window, where people don’t wear their Bluetooth attachments or have white cords hanging from their ears from morning ‘til night.
Take a drive north on Highway 49 to Highway 41 and you’ll run right into the one place on earth where there is no need for the Internet.
The mountains, rivers, meadows and waterfalls inside Yosemite National Park are mesmerizing, but they’re not as beautiful as the “X” on my blackberry showing no service.
When we decided to take a long weekend and stay at the Ahwahnee Hotel on the floor of Yosemite Valley I thought it would be a relaxing getaway but had no idea of the benefits of disconnecting from all of it – texts, e-mail, voicemail, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – all of it.
The hotel offers features like the sun room where I spotted guests reading or napping (yes in public). In the bar, guests enjoyed live music as entertainment, not multiple plasma screens with multiple games and a scrolling jumble of words across the bottom updating you on stats of all the other games you could be watching. At night, there is a story time scheduled in front of the fire where you can take a moment and listen to another human relay a story and use your imagination to follow along.
By checking into this hotel teeming with history, you also reconnect to the time when simple wasn’t just best but was all that was needed.
You don't need to pay the $400+ per night for a room at the Ahwahnee to get the same experience. Take my advice. Make the trip, turn off the phone, unplug the iPod, step out of your car and just listen.
