By Christine Tibbetts
JEKYLL ISLAND
Sat, May 17 2008
—
Power to the turtles. They’re in luck if they land at Jekyll Island, where a Sea Turtle Center opened last year to care for the sick and injured.
You might just bump into a loggerhead wearing a satellite transmitter when you’re out swimming, because this rehabilitation center helped her heal after she was washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico. They released her as a high-tech swimmer so her travels can be tracked by the experts and by the rest of us on the Center’s Web site; follow the Patient Update link.
The loggerhead named Golden Boy lost his transmitter early on but Bevelyn, named for a late sea turtle conservationist from Georgia, is easy to find in the Gulf of Mexico, says Senior Educator Alicia Marin at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
The marine epoxy used to glue the red transmitter and antenna to her hard shell must be sticking.
Visitors can watch procedures in the veterinary portion of the complex, learning about various treatments through interactive video exhibits.
If surgery makes you squeamish, just stick with the displays that teach turtle facts, like temperatures in the nest determine whether the baby is male or female.
"Here’s what we like to teach: girls are hot and boys are cool," Marin says.
Cutting-edge veterinary care and related research are the driving force of the center, located in the Island’s historic district.
Fitting since these turtles have been around 250 million years, even though only one in 4,000 make it to adulthood.
"Humans are the turtle’s biggest predator. It’s tough being a sea turtle," Marin says.
Humans look rather calm in the Jekyll Island Historic District, playing croquet on the lawn – that they call the greensward -- in front of the hotel founded in 1886 or riding bikes on the paved pathways.
In fact, calm seems to be the whole point in the National Historic Landmark District and around the marshes, woodlands and shoreline, and underneath the Spanish moss. Even the six-mile causeway lined with marshes – the only way in unless you fly or sail – is a quiet ride, decompressing after leaving Interstate 95, which connects New York with Florida.
You can keep the ride around the Island quiet too because electric touring cars are available to rent by the hour or the day for up to six passengers.
Red bugs they’re called because the first cars on Jekyll in 1914 had that nickname, chosen by the millionaires from the north who liked to winter here. Properly named Smith Flyers by the A. O. Smith manufacturing company in Milwaukee, those originals are visible in a historic photo display at Jekyll’s airport.
Today’s version can be rented by the hour or the day, and plugged in to a special socket in front of your hotel. Top out at 25 mph, the maximum state law allows, according to Red Bug co-owner Rick Van Iderstyne.
"We raced a car around the Island 7 1/2 miles," he said. "Speed limit on the roads is 35.
"The regular car beat the electric by 54 seconds."
Driving one is like eating ice cream in public. Everybody wants to know where you got it. I’m pretty sure that’s because this open-air ride—roof, shoulder harness and seat belt but no closed sides – is fast enough.
Jekyll looks like the kind of place to catch your breath, not try to lose it by rushing around.
Ten miles of beaches, picnic tables surrounded with live oak trees dense enough to filter the summer sun, long stretches to walk or bike or drive with only vegetation and shoreline in sight, plus an occasional one or two story building now and then.
I was amazed on a chilly, gray February day how many bicycle riders I saw, the fat tire kind of bike and shorts and t-shirts kind of riders. Not skin-tight shorts and helmets, bent over for aerodynamics.
Regular people, pedaling and chatting, watching birds, stopping for water or just gazing. Ladies at the Welcome Center on the entry causeway say there are 20 miles of maintained bike paths, and I saw more under construction.
Golfers have plenty of choices with 63 holes to play on four courses, some of them on the ocean. Even the youngest golfers around the nation play here in February with the U. S. Kids Golf Tournament, invitation only for six to 12 year olds.
Kids have other choices too with the University of Georgia 4-H Center operating here for 25 years, serving 11,000 people annually. Hands-on learning experiences in coastal environments is their focus.
I saw dozens of young teens, in black rubber boots above their ankles, wading and engaged in marine biology activities with their instructors.
The UGA College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences also runs the Tidelands Nature Center on Jekyll’s Riverview Drive organizing guided kayak tours, and barrier nature walks in different locations every Monday and Wednesday, plus Thursday and Friday March – September.
The Monday walk is in Clam Creek Picnic Area, a lush, marshy place with a long winding paved road as the entry. Driftwood Beach is here, and you can create the same whimsical ideas looking at this driftwood as you do gazing dreamily at clouds. Especially if you’re not fishing and I wasn’t.
Plenty of others were, standing on the long pier and casting into the water. People with books, sitting in folding chairs, kept jumping up to tug lines they had lowered over the edge to see if the baskets at the end were full of crabs.
Hmm. Were they dining in a motel or camper? Where do you cook what you catch on vacation?
The campground across from Clam Creek was packed with modest tow-behind-you campers, reasonable size RVs and some tents. Seemed like a good place to cook your catch.
If you stay at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, it’s probably better to eat in the Grand Dining Room.
Since this is a natural, kind of calm beach place, I checked out the other nature walk location, St. Andrews Picnic Area. It’s easy to find, south of the water tower and family water park if you want a landmark. Those red electric cars have geo-cashing options with the GPS system if you like geography games with local landmarks.
School was out the day I went to St. Andrews. Or perhaps home school was in session. Parents and young children seemed engaged, enjoying each other, the birds, the trees and the waters.
Jekyll Island has enough signs, but only a few. They’re the only reason I know the names of these picnic and walking and water spots. Hurray for the sign I saw when I wasn’t even looking for it, pointing me to a no-stairs-here access to the beach.
Every one of us with our various mobility styles can enjoy the beach, and the marshes and all sorts of places with birds and grasses and waters.
Jekyll Island, Georgia, seems to have it.
When you go:
www.jekyllisland.com
912-635-3636
cvb@jekyllisland.com
www.georgiaseaturtlecenter.org
912-635-4444
www.tidelands4h.org
912-635-5032
tideland@uga.edu
PHOTOS AND CULTINES
# 4142
Picnic under live oak trees near the beach, or forget the food and just wander at Jekyll Island, Georgia.
#737
Catch your dinner from the pier, on a line or in a basket, on Georgia’s Jekyll Island, or pass by the fishing on your bike or electric car.
#742
Croquet is a gentle game, and available at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel. Calm, gentle and natural is the mood on this Georgia island.
#729
The beach can be only beach with no intrusions some places in the world. Jekyll Island, Georgia has 20 miles of bike trails along its coast.
#732
Driftwood lines some of the shore in Georgia. Jekyll Island has a fishing pier overlooking this collection.
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