My family visited a town where cellphones aren't allowed. Not having service made me a more present parent.

• There is a cellphone ban at Watoga State Park in West Virginia.

• There was no signal when I tried to send a text to a friend.

• The park is close to a large telescope, which makes it a quiet zone for devices.

We went to theQuiet Zone to start the summer. My husband rented a cabin in Watoga State Park in West Virginia after a month of shift work and toddler illnesses. We'd go swimming in the lake. We hiked through the Allegheny Mountains with our sons.

A friend gave birth to a baby girl while we were at the park. I wrote my good fortune. I got a message that the message failed to deliver.

My husband mentioned as he pulled onto the main road. There's no phone service here. It isn't legal.

The area around Watoga is not backwards. Cell service has been banned because of its close proximity to the Green Bank Observatory.

There's no signal at all

Radio emissions can be detected by the telescope. The National Radio Quiet Zone is a 13,000- square-mile area around a telescope in West Virginia.

Pulling out my phone was the first thing I wanted to do. I wanted to speak to other people at the park about it.

A person who grew up in the area said that teenagers used to drive to specific mountaintops to get access to cell towers. It was nice to live at a slower pace, according to one person.

I had wrestled with my relationship to my devices. I'd tried a number of tricks to cut back on my consumption.

I didn't want to wallow in shame for relying on technology that made the already hard job of parenting much easier.

We went to the Quiet Zone to see what life would be like with more time on our hands.

It made my parenting better

When we arrived at our cabin, it was dinnertime. My toddler had an accident at the kitchen table as I began to boil water on the stove.

He said he peed out.

I took my phone out of my pocket. I was conditioned to take a quick scroll before I dealt with the chaos. I had to attend to the mess because my phone couldn't give that comfort.

We hiked after dinner. My son asked for a random trail. He wanted to go this way because it was more gorgeous. I realized that this assessment was better than what I could find on the internet.

My son was next to me in bed. I turned to him rather than reach for my device. He wasn't awake yet. I heard the sounds of his breathing. I looked at his face and saw the hills of his cheeks and valleys beneath his eyes.

I was taken back to the feeling of being present. Other people had to look out at the stars for me to be here.

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