Tybee Island, Georgia
An island guide kept by a cat who has never been impressed.
Lila is seventeen. Her great-grandmother was a feral cat on this island. She has opinions about your vacation and, inconveniently for everyone, most of them are correct. We also rent the house she is named for — two blocks off the sand — which is why this site exists and why the guide part is free.
Start here
On Tybee, the tide decides the day.
This is the thing the brochures leave out. Tybee's beach is wide and flat and the tidal range runs to roughly seven feet, so the water moves a long way in and out. The same stretch of sand is a different place at 9 a.m. than at 3 p.m., and half the island's best hours are tide-dependent.
Today's tides
NOAA 8670870 · Fort PulaskiLoading predictions…
What low water is for
Walk north. The tidepools and the flats off North Beach only exist for about two hours either side of low, and that is also when the sandbar off the Back River comes up out of the water. Shelling is better, the beach is twice as wide, and the walk along the sand to the lighthouse actually works.
What high water is for
Swimming, and anything with a boat under it. The Back River launches want water beneath them and the dolphin tours run better. High tide is also when the beach narrows enough to concentrate everyone, so if you want quiet sand at high water, walk south of 18th Street.
The three things that ruin trips
Read these before you get in the car.
Dogs are not allowed on the beach
Not on a leash, not at dawn, not in the off season. The minimum fine is $200 and the ordinance is enforced. There is a dog park by the campground, and the neighborhood streets are fine.
The rules, in full →There is no free parking. Anywhere.
The whole island is pay-to-park: $4 an hour, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., every day of the year, through an app you want on your phone before you are sitting at the Lazaretto Creek bridge.
How not to get a ticket →May through October is turtle season
Beachfront lights off by 10 p.m., red flashlights only, and fill in your holes before you leave. Hatchlings steer by light, and a foot-deep hole is a canyon to something four inches long.
What the ordinance asks →Where we come in
1103 2nd Avenue
A 6-bedroom, 4-bath house built in 1930, one street back from Butler Avenue in the 1100 block. Close enough to walk to the sand in a few minutes; far enough back that you are not listening to Butler at midnight.
On the booking sites it goes by Coast A While, which is the name to search if you are looking for it by anything other than the address. Tybee Vacation Rentals manages it.
Why a cat
Lila took fifteen years to sit on a lap.
We have had her since she was a kitten. For most of that time she regarded us the way a customs officer regards a suspiciously new passport. She did not care for the other animals. She had exactly one friend, a mostly white cat named Archie, and he died a couple of years ago.
Then, somewhere around sixteen, she started getting into laps. Not warmly. Conditionally. But she does it most evenings now, and it is the most flattering thing that has ever happened to us.
