Put a smile on your face

For the Hoff family of Idaho Falls, this region in Idaho and the surrounding area is a slice of paradise—and sharing it with friends and fellow pilots is a family tradition. One weekend each year, the flying Hoffs invite friends, fellow pilots and aviation enthusiasts, and those enamored with radial engines to their home for a fly-in at their ranch and a fly-out to Smiley Creek and other backcountry strips.

You can hop a seat on one of their many vintage aircraft or you can pilot your own airplane—vintage is best. Like a Beechcraft Staggerwing, or a Piper Cub, or a Beech 18. Any aircraft that can handle the 4,000-foot-long grass strip in the middle of the Stanley Basin will do, but realize you’ll be with some amazing old birds here—lovingly maintained, star-power aircraft with passionate owners. Every one a showstopper in its own right; here in this mountain valley, a lineup worthy of a Miss America pageant for airplanes.

Look who’s coming to dinner

Aviation to the Hoff family is like football to the Manning family or singing to the Von Trapps—everybody does it. “My dad and his brother paid off the family farm in 1934 and they agreed to do something to reward themselves for the hard work. For dad that was aviation. He got his license in 1938,” said Bob Hoff. Bob’s mother, Onita, snuck back to her childhood home in Southern California in 1948 and came home with a first flight certificate. By then there was a Cessna 120 on the family’s ranch and she began taking lessons. Local instructor Bob Jones added her to his growing list of Hoff family members who would learn to fly under his tutelage—and in that family airplane (see “Flying with Bob Jones,” page 84).

On the ranch is a 2,400-foot-long grass runway. Jones taught Onita; her daughter, Marilyn; Bob Hoff and his wife, Jane; their son, James, and his wife, Darla; their daughter Savannah, son Thomas, and nieces Cherie and Jennifer—among many others.

It wasn’t just flying that the family shared on the ranch. It was a love of people and entertaining. “My mother once came home and said the Mexican opera was coming to dinner,” Bob Hoff remembered. “These buses drive up and 110 people get off to eat dinner at the ranch.”

Among the many people and aircraft that visited his family’s Idaho Falls farm—from Max Conrad to UFO “expert” Kenneth Arnold—it was his mother who put the love for adventure in her four children. “You never knew who was coming to dinner,” Hoff said.

The ranch is Rainbow Ranch, 2,700 acres along the Idaho foothills that the family patriarch said he would name for the rainbows that appeared along the ridges after a thunderstorm rolled through. There were horses at first, and later potatoes and wheat—crops the railroad investigated in the 1900s to determine what would grow best out in the young western states.

Today it’s a thriving potato farm that son James takes care of when he’s not flying one of the vintage aircraft from Aero Mark, the FBO that son Thomas runs at Idaho Falls Regional Airport. James’ daughter Savannah works the line at Aero Mark, and the Hoffs are either on the ranch or at the airport, welcoming guests at both spots.

When Bob and his brother had their good years on the farm, they too branched out in aviation, establishing the FBO in 1984. “We named it after dad,” Bob said of Aero Mark. “His name needed to be there.”

The thriving FBO is home to two large hangars, one that dates back to the 1930s that the family renovated in 1984 and a massive 30,000-square-foot hangar that Hoff loves to open up to friends and visitors, especially those with vintage aircraft.

Stagger or swagger

Bob Hoff has never met an airplane he doesn’t like. But the radial engine and power of the Staggerwing makes it his favorite. His love affair with the Staggerwing started when he was selling Husky aircraft for Aviat Aircraft in nearby Afton, Wyoming. He saw a Staggerwing take off from a dirt strip and it “seemed like a rocket ship,” he said. “I was so impressed with its performance, I just had to have one.”

His 1939 Beechcraft D17 Staggerwing is “repaired,” he said, not restored. He’s worked on just about every piece of the aircraft but not taken it down to “the final bolt.” Its interior is as close to authentic as he could get it, crafted of broadcloth and leather.

“The Staggerwing was born in the golden days of aviation, in the 1930s. Each has its own story,” he said. “The Staggerwing makes you a ‘real’ pilot. It’s a very heavy taildragger. We say the pilot’s knees are either shaking when he’s done flying or he’s swaggering.”

Son Thomas also is enamored of the Staggerwing, photographing and publishing a magazine honoring the aircraft. Staggerwing Club News is published quarterly, and Thomas Hoff is the editor, designer, photographer, and—most important—historian. “Staggerwings were built in an age before planned obsolescence,” he said. “With regular maintenance and a rebuild or restore every few decades, we can expect Staggerwings and other aircraft of their vintage to still be flying another 76 years from now. Amazing.”

The Hoff family collection of aircraft extends beyond the Staggerwing and the original Cessna 120 Bob’s mother flew, bought for $2,650 in 1946. There’s a Husky, a Super Cub, a Cessna 180 and 172, and a beautifully restored 1948 Twin Beech D18S. The Twin Beech had the distinction of starring in the movie Northfork, filmed in 2002. James and the family’s 1943 Boeing Stearman biplane star in the Idaho Potato Commission’s television commercial to promote Idaho potatoes. “If you’ve seen the guy looking for the potato truck, you’ve seen my son James,” Hoff said. James serves on the Idaho Potato Commission board and is the pilot in the bright red and white Stearman in the commercial, giving a thumb’s up.

The round-up

Growing up on the family farm, Bob Hoff says he was once envious of the kids from town. “They had concrete to ride their bikes on; all we had was dirt. And we always had work to do. A farm kid didn’t have the freedom the city kids seemed to,” he remembered. “But now, looking back, it was the best thing. This land is a privilege to walk and to say it’s mine; we like to share that.”

And so, combining their love of old airplanes and sharing experiences with others, the Hoffs started the “Round Engine Round-Up” in 2009, inviting like-minded aviators and owners of vintage aircraft to their ranch and to fly with them from Idaho Falls out to Smiley Creek.

“My wife always says why do we get so hungry when we fly, so we combine flying with food,” Hoff said. For three days each June, the ranch is filled with people and airplanes enjoying cookouts and camaraderie, chowing down homemade food (hand-cut French fries made from potatoes fresh from the field!) and enjoying music played by Uncle Johnny on the rockin’ piano.

The weekend culminates with the early morning fly-out to Smiley Creek. The Hoff family honor the vintage aircraft by getting many of them hangared at Aero Mark. At sunrise the family and staff take each airplane out individually and line them up for takeoff. “The tower releases us at three- to four-minute intervals and we all turn to an agreed frequency. We talk and tease each other about who is fastest,” Hoff said. “It’s about a one-hour flight over the Idaho desert and lava flow, over the nuclear test site at the Lost River. Then over the Sawtooth Mountains at 12,000 feet or south over Sun Valley and Galina at 9,000 feet. It’s a really pretty flight.”

The airfield at Smiley Creek is a wide green basin trapped between the mountains. It has a 4,000-foot-long, 120-foot-wide irrigated grass strip. Waiting at last year’s fly-out with cook fires burning and spatulas in hand are members of the Recreational Aircraft Foundation (RAF), preparing a gourmet breakfast in the middle of nowhere. Eggs Benedict and cowboy coffee cooked over a camp stove. Aircraft fly in early and out before noon because the wind picks up dramatically in the afternoon around the mountains.

“The Sawtooth are a beautiful range—and appropriately named,” said Hoff. “We started the Round Engine Round-Up to share Idaho with the wonderful people we’ve met through loving a Staggerwing. We invite them to fly in the mountains, where most of them haven’t ever flown. We show them how to fly in the mountains, without getting into trouble.” The Round Engine Round-Up is “one for the logbooks,” he said with a smile.

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