This year marked our 3rd Annual Family Vacation in Tybee Island, Georgia and I still can’t believe it’s been that long ago that we paid off over $55k of consumer debt!
One of the things that I love most about Tybee Island, is the small town feel and the neighborly aspect of everything. This year was the first year that we went crab hunting and the only reason we went is that the folks staying in the cabin next to us, invited us to come along.
It was super fun! And we’ll definitely be doing it again! And don’t worry, we put all the crabs back. We ended up with 7 crabs total (I don’t have a picture because a certain 2-year old was o-v-e-r it by 10:30 pm
so I had to take her back to the cabin early) and some of the crabs were HUGE!
I thought I’d break down our trip by the day – we had some crazy adventures this trip! At the end of this post, I’ll include a financial summary of how much we spent total on our trip – it was more than we expected…
Oh and here’s how much our baby has grown since the first time we went to Tybee…excuse me while I go cry! 
Day 1:
We left on Tuesday and we decided that since we can’t check in to our cabin until 3 pm, we might as well wait for the insanity that is Atlanta traffic to chill and leave at 10 am.
After having to make a few extra pit stops for the kiddos, we were still making great time, until “POP!”, a tire blew on the boat trailer. The thing with our boat trailer is that it’s a used trailer and didn’t come with our boat. We got it for free because my husband agreed to dump the boat that was sitting on the trailer into one of the dumpsters that he had on his job site.
Well, the problem with this boat is that we didn’t realize the spare tire, despite being the correct “many” lug nuts, it was still the wrong dimensions.
All of my planning and things can still go wrong…
That meant, leaving the boat on the side of the highway and heading to a tire shop (which thank the good Lord was only 3 miles from where we were at). We ended up getting a new tire put on the rim of the tire that blew, and we bought another spare.
But once we were back at the boat, the new spare we bought didn’t fit either! Thankfully though, the new tire on the old rim worked and we were still able to get to the cabin – at 5 pm. Two hours after we planned to be there!
Our cabin…
After we got the cabin situated, we headed off to our favorite restaurant on Tybee – The Crab Shack! The kids love that they’re allowed to make a mess and that there are live gators to watch!
Then after dinner, we headed out to the beach that’s behind the campground for an evening stroll. It was the perfect ending to a not so perfect road trip!
Sunset stroll on the beach…
Day 2:
Right after breakfast, the boys (our 6-year-old and almost 5-year-old) and Daddy went out on the boat for a fishing trip! That meant the girls got to walk over and hang out on the beach!
Charlotte just LOVES the water! She had so much fun splashing and run into the waves!
After we played at the beach for a few hours, we walked back to the cabin and ate lunch. Which for me, consisted of leftovers from Monday night’s dinner that I brought from home. Then Charlotte threw one of her epic tantrums and had to go sit in time out for a little while which resulted in her falling asleep in time out.
My leftovers…
About 3 pm the guys all showed back up and upon arriving, Collin (the almost 5-year-old) stated, “sorry Mommy, but we did not catch any fish. We tried really hard but there was no fishes.” And judging by the look on my husband’s face, I could tell this was a crazy fishing trip.
Even though we come down to Tybee as a family once a year, my husband comes down to Tybee two other times with his fishing buddies. And last year’s fishing trip, he learned that the guy that he’s been buying bait from was closing up his shop because he was over the hurricanes (this was after Irma flooded Tybee).
So that meant that he had to try out a new bait and boat ramp place. That turned out to be a really expensive thing – he literally spent a $100 just to get on the water to fish! To say he wasn’t happy would be an understatement.
We decided to turn the night around and roasted hot dogs with cheese over the campfire followed by roasting marshmallows. Then we headed out to the pool at the campground for a little family swim time before crashing out.
Day 3:
Once again, in the morning the boys all headed out on the boat to go fishing, but this time my husband was a whole more prepared and only spent $13 on everything he needed to get the boat in the water to go fishing.
And of course, us girls went out to the beach again.
Then after lunch, the boys came back and we all went swimming in the pool again. Then we made hamburgers for dinner and then headed out to the “big” beach – i.e. the one with big waves. After that, we went out for some amazing handmade ice cream at the Sugar Shack.
Which of course ended up with Charlotte needed to be hosed off – thankfully we were all in our bathing suits still so it cleaned up a lot easier!
Day 4:
It rained for a good part of Friday. We had originally planned to go to our “special island” on Friday, but the rain meant we couldn’t go.
But hanging around the campground all day was actually a lot of fun! Our boys made friends with a whole slew of kids from the campground and they all started a “bike club”. This meant we didn’t see our boys for pretty much the entire day because they were too busy hanging out with their bike club (they rode in the rain and all).
We decided once the rain subsided to put the boat in the water and to go look for dolphins! We ended up finding a baby and mama dolphin in the marsh and followed them around for a little while. It was so much fun to see them! Dolphins are my favorite animal so my kids were super excited about helping mommy find dolphins!
Going dolphin watching!
This was also the first time that I backed the boat trailer down the ramp…it only took me 30 minutes. 
Clearly, I need more practice.
Then we came back to the cabin and while we were getting dinner prepped, we noticed a little boy kept peaking around our cabin. So my husband walked up and started talking to him. We ended up inviting him and his family over for roasted bratwurst and mac-n-cheese followed by roasting marshmallows.
While we were eating, the family told us about how they went crab hunting the night before with their uncle that lives not far from Tybee. We had never been crab hunting before so we decided to give it a go! It was seriously so much fun!
All the kids were finally showered and in bed by 11 pm – that’s literally the latest they’ve ever stayed up!
Day 5:
Today was the day! We finally got to go to our “special island” – Wassaw Island, which is a Wildlife Refuge Area so no motorized vehicles are allowed on the island and the only way to get there is by boat.
It’s a spot that many of the local residents of Tybee and Savannah go to so they can avoid the crowds on the beach on Tybee.
While on Wassaw, some folks came up and gave our kids a beach ball which was the highlight of our middle child’s day! That was right up until it blew out of his brother’s hands and started drifting quickly away. I jumped in and swam after it. I reach it but because I couldn’t touch, I popped the ball up the air and back.
The problem is that the current grabbed it again and carried it off further. By this time though, my brain was freaking out – there are all kinds of sharks in the waters off Wassaw! We’ve seen 5-foot sharks caught off the shore in water deep enough for me to stand in. So, I was starting to panic because I was really deep and far from shore.
I swam back and told my sweet boy that mommy was sorry I couldn’t get the ball. Thankfully, we were leaving anyway (a storm was rolling in and the thunder was getting closer), so Daddy was on the rescue mission! We gathered up our stuff, piled in the boat and headed off after it.
We ended getting the ball back thankfully, but we, unfortunately, didn’t beat the rain. Thankfully, it only started pouring down rain the last 5 minutes of the trip so it wasn’t horrible.
After we came back to the cabin and everyone was cleaned up, we headed out to our kids’ favorite pizza spot on the island, Lighthouse Pizza. We ended up being super lazy after that and just watched TV and vegged out on microwave popcorn until it was time to go to bed.
Day 6:
Due to the issues that we had coming to Tybee, we didn’t want to have the same issues going home. We decided to leave earlier than we usually leave to head home so we could hopefully find a tire shop open on Sunday.
So we packed everything up, cleaned up the cabin, and then headed out in search of a place where we could buy the correct size spare tire, which turned out to be difficult.
Apparently, the specific lug nut size of our trailer is outdated so they don’t make trailers with that size anymore (the same size tire but not the same dimensions on the lug nuts). Thankfully, we ended up finding a Northern Tool located just outside of Savannah that had the tire and it FIT!
Thankfully, we had no issues getting home but we definitely felt better knowing that this time we had a spare tire that actually fits our trailer!
One of my beach reads from the library…
***Side note: Need some awesome beach reading this summer? I highly recommend this book and this one or any one of the ones on my page here. 
So how much we did spend?
Like I said, we went over our original budget due to the tire issue and my husband’s crazy expensive first-day fishing, but we still didn’t do too bad.
I always do our grocery shopping for our vacation back at home because I can buy everything we need at Aldi which is way cheaper than the Publix that is the closest grocery store to Tybee. So we came down to Tybee with a lot of food. We didn’t need to eat out the three times we did during our stay, but they were planned expenses because they are our favorite places to go while on Tybee.
I ended up spending all of our laundry budget because the two days of rain meant that our clothes were not hang drying well and needed to be washed and dried.
Total Vacation Budget: $1,500
Total Spent: $1,805.19
As you can tell, we were really over budget this time! We had to do a lot of adjusting of the budget when we came home to accommodate the additional expenses.
The biggest expense was the tire issue. It cost us over $200 to finally get the right tire, but it was a true lesson learned for us and next time, we’ll be a lot more prepared!
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