No iPad, no Xbox: welcome to the low tech family break

Southern Kentucky seems the ideal place. The pace slows the minute we drive off the freeway onto pretty country roads, past white wooden houses and fields of corn and soya bean, and occasionally tobacco. Even the light seems gentler, soft as buttermilk.

I’ve booked a restored 1830 pioneer cabin on a farm, outside the town of Bowling Green. We arrive to see what looks like the Little House on the Prairie, with updated mod cons. No one answers at the owner’s white antebellum home. “Oh. I’m out of town today — the key’s on the table,” he says when we ring, clearly surprised we didn’t just walk in.

Inside the cosy cabin, it looks as if Little House author Laura Ingalls Wilder has popped out to milk the cow. We climb creaking stairs to find beds made with traditional quilts. Panic registers on the girls’ faces as one stunning fact becomes clear. There’s no wi-fi.

“We’re not using it this week,” I explain, hiding my phone behind my back, swearing I’ll turn off Twitter in a minute. So instead of watching Netflix on an iPad, we gather, at my insistence, on the porch “to chat”. Darkness falls. Red pick-up lights pass on the road. A chorus of cicadas starts. Unused to this enforced togetherness, we’re all a little restless. Bored, even. I fight the urge to check my email, and start to wonder what the hell I’ve done.

Then I am saved — by lightning bugs. They explode in the dark in tiny electric sparks. Mesmerised, the girls run off to watch, then return to announce they’re going inside to explore the cabin and read. Rob and I fall into a rare, uninterrupted conversation — unless you count the distant rumble and horn of a cross-county train.

Next day, we meet up with an old friend, local university professor Wes Berry, who runs a smallholding with his wife Elisa, and recently wrote a travel book about Kentucky’s slow-cooking BBQ culture. They’ve kindly arranged a go-slow itinerary for us, starting on the Green River.

We set off, accompanied by the local dog who likes to swim and run alongside canoeists. It’s hot. I worry that after the initial thrill, the kids will lose interest, but they lie back as they’re towed, chat a little, borrow Elisa’s kayak, and even swim. Rob and I paddle in and out of the shade of silver maples, and overhanging rocks, carved over centuries by water. With my phone zipped tight in a waterproof bag, rare for me, I lose track of time.

Apart from the tourist attractions of Mammoth Cave National Park and the National Corvette Museum, Bowling Green is not an obvious area for a holiday, but our following four days are easily filled. Wes takes us to the Hickory Hill BBQ shack in Scottsville, and we sit in the sunshine eating tender pulled-pork sandwiches, vinegar slaw, hot corn hoe cakes and root beer.

The owner, Justin, comes over for a chat, and shows the girls the cinderblock pits where the meat is smoked for up to 14 hours. Evie, a keen cook, tries samples of brisket and ribs. When we mention we’re curious to explore the nearby Amish country, Justin gives us a route map of Amish farm shops.

As we criss-cross the rural roads, I’m not convinced the girls really believe us when we explain the Amish choose to live free from modern technology. Then we pass a family on a horse-drawn carriage. Two girls sit on the back, in long dresses and headscarves. Uncertain, Ruby and Evie wave. The girls return it shyly.

At the first Amish farm store, we find sorghum and blackberry jam, and, with her holiday money, Evie buys a book of recipes contributed by Amish women. She pores over it for hours, reading the family names and individual instructions — normally she googles recipes on my laptop — and asks if we can buy cornmeal to make cornbread together. I’m always planning to cook more with her at home, and make a note to actually do it, and spend less time on Twitter.

Our time in Bowling Green drifts on happily. The girls feed the rescue horses on our farm, and visit the tiny cave deep in the woods behind the cabin. In the spirit of the week, we eschew Mammoth Cave National Park for a tour of the much smaller Lost River Cave. It starts at an exotic turquoise pool, where our guide explains the olden-day mystery of the men who dived down to measure it and were never seen again.

Inside the opening of Lost River Cave, we stop and blink. There is a preserved, hidden dancefloor at the mouth complete with rock dancefloor and chandeliers. A sign explains the Cavern Nite Club was first mentioned in Billboard magazine in 1933, and was famous for its big band dances and “natural” air-conditioning. We board a flat tour boat and float, heads ducked, under a terrifyingly low rock-shelf to emerge into a cathedral-height illuminated cave. There are stories of Civil War soldiers, and Jesse James and his gang, hiding out here, and it’s all very exciting.

Wes knows I love folk music, so towards the end of our stay, he takes us on a warm Saturday evening to Boyce General Store in Alvaton, to eat peach pie and watch live bluegrass. Two or three generations sit together on the long tables. One elderly lady, her adult children, and unabashed teenage grandsons in cool T-shirts, sing and clap along to a traditional song. I think about our Saturday nights back home, and how easily we can drift apart, on to email, the internet, and watching instant-access movies. But not tonight.

On the way home, we stop at Chaney’s Dairy Barn, which puts on free ice cream and “moovie” for local kids every other weekend. It’s dusk. In a packed playground by a cornfield, the girls join kids who are being pushed along, squealing, inside a giant irrigation pipe by chunky farmer dads. As darkness falls, all the families settle on a grassy slope on blankets to watch a film projected on to the red barn. Dramatically, a storm starts miles away, creating a spectacular backdrop of lightning and thunder.

It’s time to say goodbye to Wes and Elisa, so we head east through the vast Daniel Boone National Forest into the Appalachians for two days. In smalltown Hazard we eat eggs and hash browns and chat to the friendly waitress at Frances’s Diner, before visiting the hilarious Mother Goose house, built to scale from a real goose in 1935. Further east, at Hindman, Doug Naselroad, master artist at the Appalachian Artisan Center, shows us around the workshop where they make hand makebanjos and guitars. He plays an old mountain song for us on a sweet-sounding dulcimer. The girls are rapt.

I’ve been intrigued for years by this area due to the images of photographer Shelby Lee Adams, a Hazard man, who has spent 40 years taking portraits of Appalachian mountain families in the most isolated parts of this region. When I hear Hindman is on the 3,000-mile TransAmerica cycling trail Route 76, we decide to take a detour on this more remote road.

It is rural and beautiful. Dirt tracks lead off into dense forest, up to who knows where. But it’s too winding. The girls feel car sick. We have a hotel booking tonight, so can’t reduce our speed or take breaks. In a way I’m glad. It’s good to know that some things still take time; not everything can be experienced or accessed instantly.

“So,” a hesitant backseat voice says, as we rejoin the main road to start the six-hour trek north towards Washington DC. “Can we watch a film on my iPad now?”

I think back on the week. We’ve spoken more, read more books, and had a lot of fun together. For now, that’s enough to think about. So I say yes, and watch the quiet green mountains of Kentucky disappear in my rear-view mirror.

Louise Millar is author of The Hidden Girl (Pan Macmillan, £7.99).

Need to know

Virgin Atlantic (virgin-atlantic.com) has flights to Nashville, via Atlanta, from about £670. Bowling Green, Kentucky, is about a 60-mile drive away. Oak Hill Farm and Cabins (bbonline.com) has cabins from $125 a night for four.