Despite there being no electricity, no running water, no phone service, no cellphone reception, these are the things that I love about going to the cottage. I love getting out of the city and trekking through the forest several long miles until we reach our little acre lot that overlooks the tree tops alongside the lake.

It’s pretty rustic - we have a portable chemical toilet in the washroom, and I’ve built a outdoor double-sink/table to do everything from washing the dishes to cleaning up with a washcloth. When we get hungry we have a cheap 35,000 BTU propane BBQ and an awesome 70,000 BTU 3-burner stove - we never go hungry! When the bugs are bad, and they do get bad, we’ve erected a cheap 12′x12′ screened-in gazebo to hide out in. To light things up at night we have little LED pucks spread around our small 12′x24′ cabin in the woods, we have some solar lights outside that delineate walking paths so that we don’t trip and tumble down the hillside at night. And if we ever get cold we have a few cords of wood piled up at the far end of the property that we draw from to get a nice roaring fire going.

Really, considering we have none of the usual creature comforts up at the cottage, we really do have everything we need to be comfortable and enjoy ourselves - I must admit that we’ve got it pretty good.

And despite all the coolness of the geeky-cottager-gadgets that we have, my absolute favorite activity we partake in requires absolutely no gadgets at all - it involves sitting in a reclining chair and looking up at the sky and watching for satellites zipping by.

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