Growing up, my family was blessed enough to go on frequent vacation trips due to my dad’s job working with a global resort corporation. We had the privilege to go to various locations around the country. After some of us got older and left for college and became adults, and my dad got let go from that job, family trips became a rarity. Three years ago, my parents decided to take us all on a trip to South Carolina to an island called Fripp. It is sort of a beach house and resort island, not far from Hilton Head. We all fell in love with the place that we all wanted to come back as often as we could. However, renting a house big enough for all of us is increasingly more and more expensive as the economy goes and with additions to the family that happen as well all grow up. Instead of the next year, we had to postpone the trip to another year. Finally, in 2026 we returned to Fripp Island!
The island is pretty small, so primary form of transportation is golf carts. Most rentable houses come with one or two. That makes the vibes much more unique, especially when the weather is so nice. It makes getting around more fun for everyone, especially the kids. It’s a resort community, so there are multiple pools, beach entries, restaurants, tons of shops, a couple golf courses, and more. There’s a lot to do in between just relaxing at the house. Speaking of the house, we rented a different house than the last time because we needed more room, and it was fine but had a lot of weird quirks that we found throughout our stay there. Things like nearly every light switch in the whole house did not go to what you think it would go to, or simply just not go to anything.
We typically try to keep everyone together during our trips to enjoy everything as a group, but with this setup and how close everything is, we end up splitting up to do things more often than I think we anticipate. This works out because of how big the group is and how different ages we have to cater to. The kids are obsessed with the beach and the pool, but not everyone wants to do that every single minute of every day. Some of us were getting burned to a crisp by the glorious sun and needed to stay out of it for a day as much as possible.
For food, we planned ahead to have every adult sibling/couple handle one of the meals for the week, which kept my mom from doing it every single day (even though she enjoys it) and kept it interesting with the types of foods everyone chose. I ended up choosing to make Asian lettuce wraps, which are a homemade knockoff of the ones from P.F. Chang’s. They turned out really good. Everyone’s meals turned out great.
The beaches near us weren’t the cleanest or amazing white sand beaches you’ll see, but any beach is a good beach in my mind and were still great. The fact that it’s within walking distance of the house makes it even better. We went out to see the sunset on our beach one night and I got some really good shots of the wind blowing the sand across the wet sand as the tide was slowly coming in and the sun was setting. We also went across the island to another spot that allows you to see the sun setting a lot better from the west.
The island’s wildlife is the best part about it. Last time, we saved baby leatherback sea turtles which was obviously the highlight of that trip that I’ll never forget. We saw a few nests but we didn’t go out at night to try to do the same this time, as it was pretty early in the turtle egg season so not many nests existed yet compared to last time when it was August. However, we did see dolphins multiple times both out in the beach and in the rivers between the island and mainland when we took a boat tour. The dolphins near the beach were very close to us one day, probably about 30-50 feet away. You’ll sometimes come across alligators around the island as well, they have many ponds and marshes around that cater to their preferred habitats. We saw one young one while golfing, and one adult one on our last day. One of the strangest parts of Fripp Island are the near-domesticated species of deer that live there. The deer are very tame and docile and some of them will come up to be petted or fed. They are smaller than deer from the mainland or midwest, so there’s no chance of winning any hunting competitions with these, but they are a protected species anyway.
Overall it was a great trip, and it was tough leaving. Since it’s a house, it really does end up feeling like a second home while we’re there. The babies were over it by the 4th day or so, but everyone else was enjoying every second of it as much as we could. We can’t wait to go back, hopefully sooner than we had to wait last time but it all depends on each of our ability to save up for it! Unfortunately my dad was not able to join us on this one as originally planned either, due to a family emergency with grandparents, which was a bummer. Hopefully everyone can attend next time. Until then, Fripp!
I made a video highlighting the footage I took during the week, mostly as a means for my family to remember, but feel free to watch: