Progress doesn’t get in the way of pleasure on Edisto Island, one of South Carolina’s barrier islands. That’s remarkable.

This is not a backward place; I was never without cell phone service and rarely without WiFi during a seven-day beach holiday in July. Two great bookstores make that available if you can’t pick it up from your beach house or neighbors.

What’s missing are high-rise hotels and condominiums. Traffic jams. Crowds on the beach. Boisterous party groups. Litter.

All good to do without in my notion of a family vacation. Or a solo visit. You can really relax and read, chill on the beach or along the bike paths winding through neighborhoods all over this island.

Seems an important discovery to me since tall buildings cast shadows on so many of America’s beaches, elevators and condos replacing low-slung cozy cottages.

Edisto is south of Charleston, an easy day visit from your beach house, and a good arrival airport location. Savannah works too for flights and rental cars.

The drive in sets the tone: leave bustling Interstate 95, decompress a bit on route 17 and then really breathe deep under the canopy of live oak trees on Highway 174.

That’s it. Three roads, each merging into calmness. Palmetto Boulevard is the final merge, the main street, with houses on one side facing the beach and on the other side featuring thick grassy yards. Crossing Palmetto to the ocean is easy.

Loggerhead turtles like Edisto too, returning from May through August to lay their eggs on the beach, a hundred or more in one nest.

Diligent volunteers and naturalists erect frames of wood with orange tape to mark the spot, and deliver stern warnings to turn off your outside lights from dusk to dawn.

I know because I got one. Actually two. My family of 14 turned out to be slow learners so thank goodness for the turtle watchers.

Mama loggerheads intending to lay eggs are confused by lights and turn back to the sea, losing their eggs in the waters. Babies who hatch 50 – 70 days later from a proper nest might follow the light of a house instead of the moon and stars over the sea and never grow up.

Edisto Island’s 4 1/2 miles of beach seem to benefit from other caretakers too. Four-foot vertical slats arranged in semicircles catch the sand and support replanting of dune grasses. It’s easy to walk between them — this is not punitive, keep-someone-out fencing.

As I chilled, I liked knowing the beach was reclaiming itself. A lot of the credit goes to an $8 million beach re-nourishment project in mid-2006.

Clearly someone’s paying attention on this barrier island, but nicely; progress didn’t interrupt pleasure.