HOUSTON—The view of the Teton Range was spectacular at the Jackson Lake Lodge. But did the spouse notice?

No. He was too busy logging onto his laptop and plugging in his cell phone. My husband recently started writing a blog about historical pop culture, which puts him in touch with aging rock stars.

They’re calling and e-mailing while readers are commenting, and keeping up with it all left little time to admire the scenery or help corral our roaming children during the time we’ve set aside for relaxing.

He loves it, but it drives me crazy. And we’re not the only family that has conflicts over working while on vacation.

“It’s nonstop,” said Guy Brown, referring to his wife, who is constantly checking her BlackBerry.

“Weekends. Nights. You can be sitting out at a pool or a lake house, and it’s always there.”

Brown, who works in commercial real estate in Houston, chafes at the electronic leash to which his wife is often tethered. To make matters worse, when she doesn’t want to carry a purse, she slips the device into Brown’s pocket.

But his wife, Lindsey Brown, who is director of marketing for the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau, prides herself on her 24/7 availability. If a writer is working on a story about Houston and has a question late at night, she wants to be able to respond.

So her understanding husband said he’s given up complaining, preferring to joke about the device. However, Guy Brown is wistful about their trip last year to Australia and New Zealand—where his wife’s BlackBerry didn’t work. “Those were the greatest two weeks of my life,” he said, recalling the device-free time. “It was amazing freedom.”

He knew they were home, however, when they landed in Los Angeles and the BlackBerry was back in service with hundreds of e-mails waiting to be read.

Sixty-five percent of senior executives and 51 percent of managers reported in a recent survey that they checked in regularly to the office while they were vacationing.

In an online survey of 235 managers and senior executives conducted by NFI Research, nearly three-quarters check their e-mail. “In some manner, the trade-off for being able to take vacations and trips is the need to be in touch while gone,” one survey respondent reported, according to NFI Research, which conducts regular surveys on a variety of workplace topics.

For many professional couples, checking e-mail and calling in are just part of today’s reality, said Laura Lopez, a brand, marketing and leadership consultant in Houston and author of the book “The Connected and Committed Leader: Lessons from Home. Results at Work.”

“When we were in London, Lewis was texting so much,” Lopez said. She told her husband, “I hope that thing doesn’t work in Paris.”

Over time Lopez and her husband, Lewis Marks, an oil industry consultant in Houston, have hit upon a solution to avoid repeating the times they’d be on a “sightseeing” excursion while one of them was in the corner tapping away on the phone.

They set aside work time when they go on vacation, typically 60 to 90 minutes each evening before dinner. When they go to Europe, the time zone difference means their colleagues in Houston are still at the office.

It also helps to spell out in advance how much work each of them plans to do on vacation, Lopez said. When the trips are designed upfront to combine work and pleasure, neither of them can get too angry when the other has to go to meetings or catch up with clients.

Norman Schippers has even taken a more drastic step: He started leaving his laptop at home. “I realized that once you start typing, you are spending a lot of time on it,” said Schippers, president of Alodia Consulting, a management consulting firm in The Woodlands. Another problem was that his 15-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son also loved to log on to watch videos and play games—hardly family togetherness activities when the trio goes on vacation.

Now Schippers relies on his phone to scan through mail. “You can’t be on the phone longer than 30 minutes,” he said. It’s hard to type, so he tends to peck out short replies. And he tries to wake up 30 minutes before his children so he can confine his work to nonfamily time. If something is critical, he can take care of it then.

The key is to let people know in advance that you’re leaving town, Schippers said.

And remember, you need to let your mind go on vacation, he said. “It’s amazing the thoughts and insights you can get when you take a walk.” —Houston Chronicle