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‍I carved out a five day slot in the busiest month of the year in nature, April. My goal was to paddle the shoreline as far around the perimeter of Lake Jocassee as I could in five days. Some call it the 90 mile challenge as Jocassee’s “living” shoreline.

This time of year is a competition for most abundant flowering between Black Locust and Horsesugar. Mountain Magnolia is in its prime. Flowering Dogwood is still blooming along with Black Cherry. Only an occasional Serviceberry still has some flowers. Sweet Birch is easy to recognize by its catkins. White is the dominant theme of the blooms. A few loons were on the lake giving me a few hoots and an occasional wail. Around the Bear Camp Creek cove was a pair of Bald Eagles. In almost every cove I entered were one or more of the warblers including Black-throated Green, Black and White, Northern Parula and more. And sometimes there were Green Herons or Double-crested Cormorants. The two top sightings of the trip were the mammals. One was a young river otter that slid into the water and gave me a quick look as I came around a point. The other mammal was a large bobcat hunting around some erosion caves along a small beach on the Thompson River. I was lucky to watch it a few minutes before it disappeared.

It always gives me great pleasure to see what is happening in nature and Lake Jocassee is one of my favorite places to watch it happen. ~Dan Whitten, JLT guide, and so much more!