White noise

The other day I was staying in a guest house that someone provided me in Moab.  It was a two-night stay.  The view is gorgeous in Moab no matter where you are.

When I got back to the house on the second night after a great hike, the battery in the smoke detector was dying.  You know what that means, right?  Really loud chirps every thirty seconds or so.  I was dead tired from getting in very late the night before, so I really needed some sleep.

I'm in an unfamiliar house, it's ten at night, and I know where nothing is.  Even if I could find a nine volt battery (or go buy one) I couldn't change it because the smoke detector was on the vaulted ceiling well out of reach.

I closed the door to the bedroom.  That helped some, but I knew that I'd be constantly thinking of when the next chirp would come and I'd never get to sleep.

So, if I couldn't eliminate the noise, I decided to try and drown it out.  I downloaded this free white noise app for my iPad.

I tried several of the calming sounds.  I knew I couldn't turn up the volume too loud, or I'd never get to sleep anyway.  The campfire app sounds like a crackling fire with crickets in the background.  I found the perfect volume so that every time the smoke detector chirped, it just sounded like one of the crickets by the fire.

I slept like a baby.