Road Scholar, originally called Elderhostel, celebrates 50 years of travel this year. We’ll celebrate the birthday and talk about Costa Rica, Patagonia and Miami and Cuba. Background: in the early 70s, Marty Knowlton, the director of the University of New Hampshire’s youth hostel program, returned from four years of backpacking through Europe. Sharing tales of his travels with longtime friend David Bianco, who was the university’s director of residential life, Knowlton stressed how impressed he was with Europe’s youth hostels and with the Scandinavian “folk schools” for adults. They wondered: why aren’t there more opportunities for American adults to travel and learn? And why don’t Americans have more options for staying active and engaged in retirement? Today, RS has more than 900+ program itineraries in 100 countries. Come and share your RS experiences or learn about RS.