We're on our way Sept 20th for six weeks in the motorhome - Idaho to Boston and back with numerous aviation venues along the way. The photo is 4 year-old granddaughter Esther asking, "Can't I go too?"

We crossed Idaho along the Snake River Valley to our first RON (Remain OverNight) at Montpelier, Idaho. The eastern Idaho mountains along Bear Lake are already sporting red-tinged Aspen. We passed hugely popular Lava Hot Springs which reminds me of the Idaho City outdoor swimming pool which was a favorite of our children for their winter birthday parties, running shivering into the steamy pool surrounded by snow.

The Montpelier Creek KOA is our very favorite RV park - roomy and spotlessly clean with cabins for non "campers". A road out of Montpelier runs straight north through Jackson Hole and Yellowstone along the Salt River Range - and Afton where they build the Husky Airplanes.

There's a marvelous article in the August National Geographic entitled, "Yellowstone Supervolcano - What Lies Beneath the Park." They describe the immense Caldera and the Great Basin, formerly one vast crater of a still live volcano. The Yellowstone Caldera has erupted dozens of times going back 18 million years. The most recent, 640,000 years ago, was a thousand times the size of the Mt. St. Helens in 1980. There is still a 350-mile long string of volcano fields following along the Snake River Plain. In Boise some homes are even today hydrothermally heated. When will the caldera blow again? Scientists tell us - any time - perhaps tomorrow, or in 100,000 years or never.

Back to the travels. The second day out was spent crossing Wyoming where there were as many antelope alongside the highway as trucks on it. As we climbed to 7,000' around Elk Mountain, we drove through the results of a snowstorm earlier in the day. LOTS of snow for about 50 miles. COLD. WIND. So much for the last day of summer in Wyoming. Brother Craig Stumbough drove up from Ft. Collins to Cheyenne to join us for a bison dinner at the Terry Bison RV Ranch. We hadn't packed our winter parkas for this stop. Then two words crossing Nebraska. WIND & RAIN.

Our first destination on the trip was Branson, MO for the Silver Foxes, a group of Beech Aircraft Corp. retirees and Distributors of the sixties era. It was particularly fun having the surviving "3 Musketeers" group in attendance this year, pilot Joyce Case and design engineers John Elliott and Tex Donaldson, the first time we'd all been together since Bob and I left Beech in 1967. I was asked to give a presentation on the book and the kind attendees gobbled up books.

Branson is an unbelievable phenomenon nestled in the lovely Ozarks.. There are now 1,500 different family entertainments and huge crowds of mostly retirees to take it all in. Our special favorite entertainer is comedian Yakov Schmirnoff who fills a huge theater daily with his patriotic theme heavily laced with humor. And we loved the entertainment on the Showboat Branson Belle with a falling-down funny dog act. That evening cruise was capped with the most amazing fireworks we've ever seen.

A couple of stops are ahead in Ohio en route to Boston.

Almost ready to hit the road

We're loading up the motorhome for a Friday, September 19, departure. Stay tuned.