Lake Jocassee - Day 1

[flyminion]

Today, my mom and I began a three-day vacation at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. I discovered the lake on a previous excursion this spring when I kayaked across it to access the lower Thompson River. The lake was basically just a means to an end for that excursion, but I was surprised to discover it had clear blue water, and cooler water temperatures than most lakes in the Appalachian foothills. Aside from that, part of the allure of Lake Jocassee is that it has several waterfalls that spill directly into the lake. I had seen one of them (Wright’s Creek Falls) on my previous visit, but I was hoping to see the others, and possibly find some nice beaches and jumping spots. My mom is actually more into kayaking than I am, so I figured she would probably enjoy Lake Jocassee as well. We rented a villa (i.e., cabin) for two nights in Devil’s Fork State Park, which has the only public access to the lake.

This morning, we loaded the boats into the truck and drove the nearly four hours from Abingdon to Lake Jocassee. We arrived around 1 PM, but we were only allowed to check in between 4:00 and 5:00, so we decided to paddle to Sandstone Beach, which is the closest noteworthy point of interest to the park.

We unloaded the boats from the truck and paddled out from the boat ramp across from the visitor center.



The forecast for today originally hadn’t had high rain chances, but there was now a 57% chance of rain. The sky was gray, and we could see a sheet of heavy rain on the north side of the lake.



We thought we were going to get drenched, but the radar indicated that the storm was skirting across the north side of the lake several miles away. We only got sprinkled on. It took us about 50 minutes to paddle from the boat ramp to the beach.

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It felt like we were paddling against a current, and the water was kind of choppy (although the waves were moving in the direction we were paddling). The beach had a large sandstone boulder which I climbed to the top of.



I also snorkeled around looking for jumping opportunities, but the water around the shoreline near the beach was mostly shallow. The sun came out briefly, but the skies mostly stayed overcast while we were there.

There was a huge wall of cliffs that looked 100 feet or higher in some places just downstream of the peninsula where the beach was.

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Subsequent googling revealed that this area actually is called The Wall. We paddled around the peninsula, and I found a couple of potential jumps from about 10 to 25 feet where the cliff wall hit a rounded nook on the back side of the Sandstone Beach peninsula.



I would have climbed up and done one of the lower jumps, but I was a little chilly from swimming when the skies were overcast, and the lack of sun made the water look uninviting, so I didn’t jump. I had previously seen a YouTube video of Carolina waterfall guru Rich Stevenson and his friends jumping off the ledge in the above picture, but I didn't realize this was the same spot until I reviewed my photos afterwards.

We paddled back across the dam arm of the lake so we could check in on time. Going back seemed a lot easier. The sun also started coming out for longer periods of time as we were paddling, so I got back in the water once we neared the park. I carefully scanned this area of the shoreline for jumping opportunities, but the water was too shallow below any potential vertical elements. We saw a couple of otters that were jumping up out of the water near the villa’s boat dock (all close-up animal photos were taken by my mom with her legit digital camera):

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My mom paddled ashore to check into the villa while I checked out the beach next to the villa boat dock. There was a heron standing there chilling. After my mom checked in, she got back in her boat and we leisurely paddled up and down the shoreline near the villa as the sun began to set. We saw a large heron (possibly the one I had seen a few minutes ago) chilling in a pine tree.



Since there were no good jumps, I snorkeled the area under the villa boat dock.



The water was about 9 feet deep about halfway down the dock, so I jumped off it (hey, there wasn’t a sign saying you couldn’t). After this, we paddled back to the villa boat ramp and loaded the boats into the truck. We had paddled a total of 7.2 miles today, according to my fitness tracker. We waited at the boat ramp for the sunset, but it didn’t turn out to be very eventful.



We drove back to our villa, which was just around the corner. We unpacked our stuff and had a take and bake pizza for dinner.

Day 2 of the trip is covered in my next entry.