From Valleyford, WA N47°37.925’ W117°14.433’


Day 16, Caravan Day -18

Our last day in Kettle Falls: I got up early, ok early for me, 7:30 AM. I dumped the black tanks and decided to try to find a couple of the closest geocaches. I ask Rod if he wanted to go. He was learning how to run the road work machinery used on the improvements on Mollenburg Road, so he declined. Mollenburg is the road from Highway 25 to their house, for some reason all the houses on this road have Hwy. 25 addresses.

The closest cache was 2.2 miles away, but turned out to be a 17 mile round trip. When I got to the turn off and realized how far back I had to drive I did the next closest cache. That one was easy, a micro on the guard rail overlooking a sailboat harbor on Lake Roosevelt. I checked the next closest 4 caches, but they were on the other side of the lake. I took the forest service road to my first intended cache. Turns out it was almost directly east up the hill from Bud and Marlene’s.

Back at Rod’s the road was looking good and Rod was running a vibrating roller machine. I learned from Rod that I had asked the wrong Rodreick to go caching and that I was on Barbara’s bad list. I apologized as best I could, I’ll try to make it up the next trip. Bud and Marlene came over for goodbyes and we took pictures around Barbara’s new landscaping.

Bob and Barbara went to lunch with us at the Little Gallea in Kettle Falls. We were too late for breakfast. We had great hamburgers instead of breakfast. I also picked up a new Kettle Falls grouch t-shirt. Kettle Falls claims 1650 friendly people and one grouch. A new grouch is elected every year. It is really a popularity contest and an honor to be selected as the grouch. We’re still waiting on Bob to be chosen….

We got on the road about 2:00 PM headed for the Spokane area to visit Kim Correll and her husband Mark. Kim is a retired detective from Metro. They have a really nice place in Valleyford, a community near Spokane, WA.

We drove a grueling 106 miles today. It wasn’t really grueling, actually a very pleasant drive through very fertile areas either planted or ready to plant surrounded by pine covered hills. Almost immediately after leaving Bob’s house we had heavy rain. The rain stopped before we got to Kettle Falls. As we went south and east the weather cleared and became less cloudy. Like I said it was a very pleasant drive. The Correll place is beautiful but differs from Rodreick’s. Bob’s is on a slope overlooking a lake. Kim’s is flatter and more heavily wooded. A contrast but both are very nice.

We parked near Mark’s shop and had 30 amp service, plenty of power in this weather.

The Correll’s provided a great supper of spaghetti, salad and garlic bread. After supper Kim and Mark went to an arena football game and we relaxed in the coach.