"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.