I'm looking back on a screen-free vacation. That means no laptop, no iPhone or BlackBerry, no Wi-Fi.

I'm no neo-Luddite. I love my laptop and iPhone because they give me mobility and freedom to work from anywhere I want. My virtual office has no walls. And I like that. Some people call BlackBerrys and other handhelds "slave bracelets." Not me. Mine helps me play hooky. Whether it's a child's performance at school, a doctor's appointment for strep throat or beating traffic out of town on a Friday afternoon, I'm online. I can easily check for work-related wildfires, which I can deal with immediately before they flame out of control.

But there's a downside to that. All the time-shifting in the world doesn't reduce your workload. In fact, you can end up spending more time working simply because such communication is available. Work bleeds into what was once personal time: weekends, evenings and early mornings. I deliberately email some business contacts during the weekend because I know they're checking their email and will get back to me promptly. I exploit their accessibility.
Our mobile gadgets encourage multi-tasking, which is a bit of a misnomer. We're not really doing several things at once; we're still doing things one at a time, just devoting tinier and tinier slices of time to each of these tasks.

The good thing is we can turn all our mobile devices off. Even better, we can leave voicemails and vacation responses that refer anyone who tries to reach us to someone else  so we can have a real vacation. And early in August, that's exactly what I did when I headed off to Glacier National Park with my husband and our two daughters. Oh, it was a heady feeling leaving those "I'm-on-vacation-with-no-access-to-voicemail-or-email" messages.

Glacier National Park is the perfect destination for those trying to go screen-free. None of the hotels we stayed in -- classic railroad hotels like Lake McDonald Lodge, Many Glacier Hotel and Glacier Park Lodge -- had TV sets (good thing, too, given the thinness of the walls). Even better, I had been assured that there was limited cell phone service and no Wi-Fi hotspots in or near the park.

Of course, I almost immediately stumbled into one. It was at one of those remote outposts on the fringes, a place called Polebridge, on Glacier's western edge at the end of a long drive along a bumpy gravel road that almost shook the fillings out of my teeth. There was a log-cabin saloon with food and music that apparently brings local denizens in by the scores on Friday nights, when there is a two-hour wait for dinner.

There were several little rental cabins and one adorable store, a classic western establishment with a false front, a hitching post, upside down barrels for tables and sawed-off tree trunks for stools. The place had an incredible bakery whose delicacies just melted in my mouth. And it had two other essential services: an outhouse and a hot spot. Handwritten signs politely asked users of each for contributions -- for exporting the contents of the former and importing the services of the latter.

I wasn't nearly as tempted by the hotspot as I was by that bakery. As it was, we couldn't stay long, it was time for us to embark on our overnight rafting trip -- no question of any screens on that part of our vacation!

We had a great trip. We rafted. We hiked. We leaped screaming off rocky promontories into deep, 50-degree glacier-fed lakes We saw two bear cubs debate over which should dart out onto a road to snatch up a tempting piece of road kill. We watched a grizzly cub tease its mama mercilessly. We saw moose, deer, mountain goats and bald eagles.

As my daughters and I inched along narrow trail misnamed the Garden Path (it should be called Precipice Path) just below the Continental Divide, I almost lost my footing while laughing when my 12-year-old stated matter-of-factly as she clutched the cable designed to reassure the vertigo prone, "My animal equivalent is not a mountain goat." We rode horses. We had high tea at the Prince of Wales Lodge in Glacier's sister park, Waterton Lakes.

And we talked and laughed -- a lot. We told a lot of dumb jokes over and over. My husband added to his collection of outhouse haiku. Why that topic? Well, for one thing, outhouse inspiration abounds when you're hiking. And my daughters adore them. But another reason is such getaways give him plenty of time to fulfill his silliness quotient. Soon, I hope he produces enough to make a calendar.
At one picnic lunch in a lake framed by 8,000- or 9,000-foot peaks, we relaxed on sun-warmed rocks while our daughters styled our hair, using the lake's water as their styling gel. And we listened -- to each other, to the sounds of birds and the wind in the treetops. (Quite frankly, I was also listening for bears munching huckleberries). And sometimes we were just quiet -- no interruptions from vibrating BlackBerrys, email alert pings or ringing cell phones.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not bemoaning the realities of living in the information era, I love living in this age -- that's why I cover travel technology. I consider it the great enabler. But I also like being able to temporarily bail out -- and the fresh perspective that the break provides.

Tags: Screen-free, Unplug, Vacation