Monday, Day 3 of our Foothills Trail hike, started off with a mile long warm-up from Chimneytop Mountain down to the small town of Rocky Bottom, and the crossing of US 178. We took a quick break at the Laurel Valley Access, and prepared ourselves for the long and tough 700' climb up Flatrock Mountain. Once at the top, we were greeted with a nice view to the south and the west, with the Oconee Nuclear Station and Lake Keowee off in the distance Because we were 1/2 day behind schedule, we made our lunch stop at the campsite that we had planned to stay the previous night. Looking back, we laughed at ourselves for having planned to hike this far the previous day. After lunch, we entered Laurel Fork Heritage Preserve and quickly descended to the the Laurel Fork Creek

For the next 4 miles, the trail follows and crosses Laurel Fork Creek several times. In our opinion, this is one of the easiest and most enjoyable sections of the trail. The trail here is very flat, rather cool and there is plenty of water. There are 7 substantial bridges in this 4 mile stretch.

While hiking along Laurel Fork Creek, we passed 2 men who were out on a day hike looking for Oconee Bell plants and flowers. They asked us if we had seen any farther upstream, but of course we hadn't been looking for them specifically. Before we parted ways, they mentioned that there were a couple groups of hikers ahead of us totaling about 11 people.

Not more than 15 minutes after passing the day hikers, we passed a group of 4 backpackers headed the opposite direction. It took a few seconds to realize that it was the same group of 4 hikers that had passed us when we ate lunch on Sassafras mountain. We were surprised to see them so far down the trail, and we were confused about their plans. Of course, we didn't stop to talk to them as they seemed in a hurry to keep moving.

Toward the end of this 4 mile section of the trail, we came to Laurel Fork Falls. There was a beautiful campsite here, which is located at the top of the waterfall. We stopped to take a picture and look at this beautiful waterfall, but quickly moved on, as we needed to hike at least 10 miles, and we had only gone 8.5.

We had just enough energy to start up the hill after the Laurel Fork boat access to Lake Jocassee, and we decided to stop for the night at the very first acceptable spot along the trail. We found an old, abandoned roadbed along Jackies Branch creek, and setup our tent. We didn't quite make our distance for the day, let alone make up the distance that we lost the previous day. Looking back, we are glad we stopped here because the next decent campsite was 3 1/2 miles down the trail.

We had another hard day, but this section of the trail was very beautiful and enjoyable. We went to bed early this night, listening to the weather radio and planning out the next couple days. We started hoping and praying that we would make the Bad Creek Access at least by Wednesday night, otherwise we would  be hiking without food!