The pings arrive before morning coffee: work emails, news headlines, social notifications. Thirty minutes later, you’re thumbing through suggested videos, trying to remember what you were supposed to check in the first place. The glowing screen sapping attention before the day has properly begun.

The modern benefits of being accessible mean our smartphones are interrupting our sleep, our conversations, and even intended quiet moments. Studies link excessive screen time to stress, anxiety, fragmented attention and emotional fatigue. Yet stepping away from our devices isn’t easy with the dependency on them we’ve interwoven into our lives, and it can feel equally stressful, nearly impossible, to disconnect.

Ironically, just a few hours north of the tech capital of Seattle, there lies an unexpected reset.

In Washington State’s San Juan Islands, guests launching sea kayaks with Outdoor Odysseys often begin their trip with a radical act: switching their phones to airplane mode (or as the advertising implies, kayak mode), and some even leaving them behind altogether.

“There’s information overload and mindless technology use. Both are taxing people in different ways,” says Tom Murphy, the owner of Outdoor Odysseys. Murphy has been with the outfitter since 2005 and purchased the company from founder Clark Casebolt in 2012. He believes strongly in the digital detox, an intentional period of time where we cut the cord and eliminate our screen time.

The research sides with Murphy. Exercise, meditative activities like paddling, and time spent outdoors, in nature, untethered from technology, have been found to reduce stress and symptoms of depression.

While everyone has the power to change their relationship with their phone anywhere, Murphy sees paddling the San Juan Islands as a transformative catalyst. “What we’re really helping guests do is reset their relationship with technology, to enjoy their time with us as fully as possible.”

Murphy and Outdoor Odysseys have built a four-decade reputation guiding paddlers through the waters around these islands. And as the small sea kayaking outfitter has evolved, they have become increasingly relevant with an essential need for modern travel: an analog antidote to our digital lives.

Digital Detoxing by Way of Kayak in the San Juan Islands

Rewriting the schedule on island time

Kayak travel dismantles urgency. Movement depends on tides, weather and daylight rather than rigid itineraries. Launch times sometimes shift. Routes sometimes adapt.

“We’re used to controlling our daily schedules,” Murphy says. “Out here, nature sets the pace, but no matter the route, you’ll have a great time on the water.”

That slower rhythm, commonly called “island time,” begins before paddles even touch water, with travel to the San Juans based on the schedule of ferries. The ride gives guests their first moment of pause to begin disconnecting from the mainland and focusing on the trip ahead and the people they will be traveling with.

Unlike viral destinations of social media fame, Outdoor Odysseys avoids performative tourism in the San Juan archipelago. “There are no queues for the perfect photo rock,” Murphy says.

Instead, you explore one place deeply rather than racing between highlights to check off a list.

Going out of office and into the blue

Sea kayaking demands presence almost immediately. Unlike passive sightseeing on a large boat, a kayak connects travelers directly at water level. The result isn’t an escape from reality, but more a recalibration, with attention returning to the physical world, truly IRL (in real life).

“You’re moving under your own power,” Murphy explains. “Your hands are busy, your brain is engaged, and you naturally start paying attention to what’s around you: the birds, the water, your paddling companions.”

Without engines or exhaust, the kayaks move almost silently, allowing you to tap into the marine network around you.

“It’s a respectful way to move through the water,” Murphy says. “You see things more organically, from urchins slowly crawling the sea floor in the clear waters to marine birds swooping and plunging nearby.”

Getting Real Without Reels

Wildlife encounters in the San Juan Islands are anything but predictable, but in a world of influencer-curated itineraries, that unpredictability is exactly what makes encounters so intimate.

“Seeing whales is a privilege, not an inevitability,” Murphy says as he expresses to aspiring detoxers that this is a kayak trip first and the rest is up to chance.

Encounters do happen regularly. Harbor seals appear on nearly every trip, curious heads bobbing like what Murphy jokingly calls “marine Labradors.” Sea lions announce themselves long before becoming visible. And occasionally, paddlers experience moments impossible to script, like the sudden breath of a porpoise breaking calm water or an orca surfacing nearby.

Guests often reach instinctively for cameras, but the quickness of these encounters usually foils their attempts. Murphy believes that dozens of rushed photos rarely replace one deeply lived moment.

But any wildlife interaction, according to Murphy, reminds us that there is a lot going on under the boat, and it’s worth slowing down to experience it and consider the positive impacts of marine conservation too.

Meanwhile, night paddling transforms perception of the waterscape entirely. During bioluminescence tours, darkness settles across calm water until paddle strokes ignite flashes of living light.

For many guests, Murphy says, it’s their first experience with true darkness, free from screens, streetlights, or artificial glow. Without visual overload, he says, awareness sharpens. The water sounds louder and stars appear brighter.

Replacing social media with social life

Once phones get put away conversation is inevitable. And in tandem kayaks, communication is essential to adjusting pace, pointing out wildlife, and getting to know your shipmate. Even strangers quickly develop a shared rhythm.

“You’re literally in the same boat,” Murphy says. “Everything becomes something you’re doing together.”

Evenings amplify that connection. Well-thought-out meals unfold slowly on remote beaches. Murphy, an avid cook, has shaped Outdoor Odysseys’ backcountry menu around sustainability and enjoyment rather than convenience and speed. Local produce is prioritized when possible, fair-trade coffee fuels mornings, and herbs grow beside the company’s office.

After hours of paddling, these shared meals become memorable rituals rather than refueling stops. Many of Outdoor Odysseys’ reviews comment on the excellent food, and amazing guides. So naturally, conversations at camp linger long after dinner ends.

Connection found

Without digital distraction, simple activities regain novelty: skipping stones, tidepooling, building driftwood sculptures, being mesmerized by flames dancing in a campfire, and watching sunsets that light up the sky.

Murphy recalls watching a young child sit happily in the middle seat of a triple kayak, occupied with nothing else as she turned her spray skirt into a tidal pool with some seawater, kelp and a rock crab.

“It pulls people away from a false urgency,” Murphy says. “They remember or figure out how to fill time differently.”

As trips end and phones reconnect, messages and notifications flood back. Headlines resume their relentless pace. And Murphy says that’s okay. What Outdoor Odysseys ultimately offers isn’t escape from modern life, he says, but perspective on how to live within it.

“We don’t need to abandon technology,” Murphy explains. “We just need a healthier relationship with it.”

Out on the water, paddlers rediscover things increasingly rare: sustained attention, shared experience and the quiet confidence that comes from moving through the water under their own power, immersed in the natural world.

Outdoor Odysseys offers half to multi-day kayaking itineraries in the San Juan Islands between Victoria Island, the mainland of British Columbia and Washington State.