For over a decade, Michelle and I have been taking a ski
trip to Snowshoe, WV almost every winter. For a snowboard fanatic like myself, it’s
a great place within relative driving distance here in the southeast. It takes
a while to get there, but once there, it is nothing but snowboarding, sleeping,
snowboarding, eating, and more snowboarding. For me, this is a hint as to what
heaven will be like.
One of the more interesting aspects of the resort is the
lack of cell phone coverage. I have been out to resorts in the Rockies, and
updated my twitter feed at 10k before! I called Michelle from one of the highest
peaks right before going down it. Its quite common these days to have cell
service at almost all of the major ski resorts in the US. But Snow is
different. The reason for this is because the resort is located in a federally
regulated “Quiet Zone” that is maintained by the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (http://www.nrao.edu/). Cell phone
service and even wireless access points are kept to a minimum in this area. If
you have issue with being away from your phone, and contact with outside world
for a long period of time, Snowshoe will be a little uncomfortable for you at
first….
But one of the main reasons (outside of snowboarding…) that
I love coming here is the Quiet Zone. You can’t access twitter regularly. You
can’t update your facebook posts regularly. Email is hit or miss. And the interesting
thing is, after a day or so, no one seems to care. You can tell who just
checked in, because they have that look of, “why can’t I access the internet?”
on their face….True, it’s a bit of a shock at first, but after a while you find
yourself not really caring about what people think you are doing.
For me, I think we all need a “technological detox”
periodically. Most of us are not strong enough to turn everything off while
still at home, even though we know constant monitoring of social media, games,
etc. is not healthy for us. We need to make intentional trips to places that we
know have no coverage of any kind. For Michelle and I, Snowshoe is one of those
places. What is yours?
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