Lake Jocassee - Day 3

This is the final entry about my three-day vacation at Lake Jocassee in South Carolina. Day 1 and Day 2 are covered in my previous two entries.

This morning, my mom and I packed our stuff and checked out of the villa at 10 AM. I had originally wanted to go to the Horsepasture River today and revisit the swimming holes that were too rough to be safe during my 2016 visit due to the high water, but after yesterday’s deluge, I figured it was pretty pointless to hit any swimming holes on the rivers that feed into Lake Jocassee. Instead, we decided to paddle up the Howard Creek arm of the lake. Our goal for today was to make it to a waterfall that spilled into the lake from Bad Creek (I will refer to it as Bad Creek Falls, although I think it’s technically unnamed). We decided that after that, we would go as far as we felt like we could go and still make it back to the boat launch by 4 PM, since we had to drive four hours back to Abingdon afterwards.

( Click here for the full trip report with pictures and videos )

In summary, although I usually prefer creeks and rivers over lakes, Lake Jocassee is a great lake with exceptionally clear water and plenty of waterfalls, cliffs, and beaches to explore. The weather was less than ideal on the first two days of our trip, but it turned nice on the last day, as per Murphy’s Law. It was still warmer than my excursion on the lake back in early June, and kayaking was more enjoyable this time around since we brought our own kayaks and didn’t have to return them by a certain time. Even though we had three days on the lake, there were still a lot of things we didn’t get to see. Next time, I would like to check out the Whitewater River arm of the lake and maybe scramble upstream a bit on that river. I would also be interested to check out the rest of the Howard Creek arm, and hopefully get a shuttle to check out the other significant waterfalls on the lake.
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Update: We returned in 2022 and visited the rest of the major waterfalls. Click here for the trip report.