We moved from Chicago to a laid-back remote island in the South you can only get to by boat. We love it so far.

• Nicolle and Michael Downing both grew up in the Midwest but recently agreed to a change of pace. 
• In 2022 they moved their family to Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, near the Georgia border.
• They love perks like morning runs on the beach, but getting off the island can be a headache.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicolle, 45, and Michael Downing, 53, about their move from Chicago, Illinois, to the Haig Point neighborhood on Daufuskie Island, a 10-square-mile, mostly car-free community off the coast of South Carolina near Hilton Head and the Georgia border.

On top of their yearly HOA fee of about $18,000, there is a yearly community membership that starts at $25,660 — not including the one-time $50,000 initiation fee or roughly $4,000 of annual taxes. The membership covers ferry transportation, two parking spots on Hilton Head, and other perks. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Michael: We have both lived in the Midwest pretty much our whole lives and had never experienced a different area of the country other than just visiting.

I was in downtown Chicago for about 20 years and Nicolle for 15. Then we moved to the Hinsdale area, and we were in the suburbs for about nine years.

Nicolle: Part of our decision came from having twins and just wanting to give them a bit of a different life to grow up in.

About 10 years ago we started coming down to Charleston and really loved it.

We loved the slower pace of life. It just seemed very pleasant to be around.

We've come to Daufuskie Island five or six times before we decided to move. One thing Mike and I always said was we want to be by the water. We want to see the water — it's a sense of peace, a sense of calmness.

Almost everywhere on this island is a couple-minute golf cart ride to the beach. It is just gorgeous.

We opted for Daufuskie's remoteness over Hilton Head's more metropolitan vibe

Michael: We were thinking of moving to Hilton Head, which is a little more metro, but even there it doesn't feel like you're escaping.

We had a little inside information on Daufuskie Island. I grew up with a friend who moved to Daufuskie with his family about six or seven years ago.

Nicolle and I were in Charleston on a trip, and we came down to visit him, and we got a chance to see the island.

Nicolle: Mike and I would always come and say, "We want to move here." And then we'd go home and say, "We can't move and leave everything here."

This past June, we asked Michael's friend to take us around to look for a piece of land to build on for retirement, or potentially an investment property. We saw a couple different places. Then we walked into the house that we're currently in and something just hit us both. We put in an offer and decided to move.

Michael: We bought the home in October 2022 for $1.16 million and then moved down here in December of last year.

The logistics of getting off the island aren't as difficult as you might think

Michael: Why not move to another metro area, or look something a little more like Chicago? Those cities are very close to us. Nicolle and I just took a little weekend trip to Charleston, which is two hours away. Savannah is one hour away. When you want a little more action or a little more energy, it's very easy to get there from here. All those things are within reach.

We have two ways to get to the island. There's a ferry that's part of our dues with Haig Point that goes back and forth every hour. It takes about a half hour.

But then we also have a water taxi, which is a smaller boat that takes us right to the harbor town at Hilton Head. And that's only a 5-minute boat ride.

Nicolle: The water taxi is free for children under 18, and for adults it's $6 each for the first two adults.

Michael: We were thinking about the cost of the water taxis. We've been adding it up and looking at our monthly spend, and it was maybe half as much as we'd spend on trains and taxis in Chicago.

Nicolle: We also have two cars. We leave them over at the embarkation and it's no cost at all — it's part of our dues. It's nice to be able to have access to them, especially if one of us is traveling to drive and park at the airport.

On top of the club membership itself, there's a cost that everybody has to pay just to live within the community, which pays for the fairies, and the valet service.

The HOA fee is probably somewhere between $16,000 and $18,000 annually.

Michael: The trade off is our taxes in Hinsdale were about $20,000 a year and they're about $3,000 or $4,000 here.

Living on an island only accessible by boat takes a lot more coordination

Nicolle: I was the person that would go to the grocery store every single day. I didn't like to plan our week out for dinners, and I would go almost every day and just pick up what I wanted to make for dinner. That has been the biggest challenge for me — trying to figure all that out.

Instacart delivers groceries — it's not any different than Instacart in Chicago. Instacart will bring them over to our embarkation, put the groceries in a cooler, and then our valet service brings them over to your house, which is great.

Michael: You have to get used to the slow pace a little bit because we're so used to the fast-paced way of life in Chicago. Anywhere you go, no one is in a hurry.

Nicolle: With the kids' school, they take the water taxi over to Hilton Head and then the school will pick them up where the water taxi ends. Mike and I don't have to leave the island to get them to school which is a benefit.

Getting to the airport takes a lot longer. In Chicago we were about 25 minutes from O'Hare, and here typically you have to take a 30-minute boat and you have to plan to drive an hour to Savannah, and you have to coordinate to make sure your flights aren't too late or you'll have to try to schedule the water taxi. So it's just more coordination on that end.

Michael: Another thing that we do miss is we had a big group of friends and family back in Chicago. That's the hardest part.

But we've found that they love to come visit us. We've only been here five months, but I think we've had at least five different groups come to stay.

Our daily routines are a lot less hectic now that we're outside the city

Nicolle: I found it surprising how content our kids were here, to be honest. They're just both at peace.

I wake up and I feel like I see my family so much more.

Michael: I have a different routine now than I used to in Chicago.

I'm a builder and developer. In Chicago, most days I'd get in my car and go check on my projects and come home and fight through traffic.

Now I get up in the mornings and I typically go run on the beach and see the dolphins. And that's my morning routine.

You just feel more relaxed. It just feels like a better life than it did — it's less hectic. I'm doing more with my kids than I ever did. It's just a different, slower, easier pace of life.