Late summer and the plans were finally set ­— a trip to France, two weeks, one in Paris, wandering through arrondissements, sipping espresso, one in Provence, staying at a bed and breakfast, touring the region’s art-filled spaces.

It would be the 11th trip to France for Eleanor Thomas. She’s every bit the Francofile, with numerous subscriptions to magazines about French living, a cat named CoCo and a flair for fashion that revolves around pink. Joining her would be Jim Fly, a St. Joseph business owner whose family has long considered Eleanor one of their own.

But as the second deposit for the trip came due, things were not, how do you say, trés bien.

Eleanor, who works as a staff assistant at Saxton Riverside Care Center, faced some problems at work that threatened to take up much of her time. And so she wondered aloud to Jim if she should even make the journey.

“‘Eleanor,’” Jim remembers telling her, “‘This could be your last chance to go to France.’”

“She called me back,” Jim says, “and she says, ‘It’s not my last chance to go to France. How could you think that?’”

Well, Eleanor is 82.

But she’s also Eleanor, an infinitely positive woman who lives in a Pepto pink house with red carpet and a drum set in the kitchen.

She would go to France again.

She’d meet painters, make friends, sip wine and find inspiration everywhere, just like she had on that first trip so many years ago, when she learned something about herself that made all the rest to come possible.

IT ALL BEGAN WITH PUPPETS

Mr. Jones wears a neat black suit. He sits, silently, as Eleanor talks about her life, her travels and all the adventures on which he’s joined her. Mr. Jones, in fact, would have more stamps in his passport than most people — if he had a passport and if we was a person.

But he’s a puppet.

And he’s traveled with Eleanor on every trip for 50 years, beginning with that first trip to Europe.

In 1962, she was 35, with a St. Joseph radio show that featured her and her puppets. Eleanor began entering scripts into a National Shoe Institute contest and won a trip to Europe.

“Mr. Jones, how would you like to go to Europe,” she asked him then. “And he said, ‘yes.’ And so we went.”

Eleanor traveled to London, Zurich, Paris and Rome all by herself, except for the company of Mr. Jones. She made friends, talked with strangers, found her way around in cities she didn’t know, and discovered that she wasn’t once afraid.

“I found out I could do it.”

And since, she’s never stopped, not as she aged, not after losing her husband, whom she married at 45. She kept traveling, finding new ideas in each foreign corner she visited.

“You know, her eyes sparkle in a different way when she’s returned,” says Connie Saxton, administrator of Saxton Riverside Care Center and Jim’s wife.

Today, Eleanor’s paintings fill the halls at Saxton’s.

The idea for this latest trip came one day when Eleanor opened one of her French magazines to an ad for a tour to Provence. She’d never been there. She mentioned it to Connie, and soon, Jim called.

“‘Eleanor,’” she remembers him saying. “‘How would you like to go to Provence and I’ll carry the bags.’”

Eleanor wasn’t fooled. She knows Jim and Connie are protective of her, which they’ll readily admit. But Jim, a photographer, was also ready for a little artistic inspiration from the Provencal light, markets and history.

When the first one was cancelled, they changed tours, and in October, Eleanor, Jim and Mr. Jones arrived in Paris.

BEDAZZLING

In her bags, Eleanor packed several pieces of St. Joseph. She’d painted green, blue and yellow T-shirts with horses, her newest obsession, information about St. Joseph, the Pony Express, Trails West, Coleman Hawkins and bedazzled jewels.

“I wore them there to attract attention to us,” she says.

After an exciting week in Paris, Jim and Eleanor arrived in Provence. There, they saw Van Gogh’s mountains, visited the Cathedral Saint Sauveru, saw art and history and beauty everywhere.

One day, on the way to a luncheon, Eleanor and Jim passed through an enclave of artists selling their work. Eleanor stopped to look at one woman’s paintings.

“Eleanor didn’t speak much French,” Jim says. “The other lady didn’t speak much English, but they were kindred spirits.”

He stepped away for a moment, and when he came back, a crowd of people surrounded Eleanor, who was putting on a puppet show with the help of Mr. Jones.

Stories like that from their trip go on, and though she got tired and did need help with her bags, Eleanor’s positivity endured.

“In that little frame is so much optimism and enthusiasm for life,” Jim says. “You would never ever guess that she’s (82).”

“There are not many people that are as positive as she is,” Connie agrees, attributing much of that to Eleanor’s faith. “She’s one of a kind.”

Here’s one last moment from that trip — the one that ended the whole thing.

Eleanor and Jim boarded a Continental Airlines plane, and during their flight back to the states, learned it would be the last for the pilot, who’d been flying for 30 years.

He came out of the cockpit and wished them all well. Then, when he taxied onto the runway, fire trucks waited on either side, shooting out towering arcs of water for the plane to drive through. It was a final honor.

Now a less optimistic person might suppose Eleanor found some send off of her own in those streams of water, that maybe this would be her last trip.

But c’mon. Have we learned nothing?

Eleanor won’t take any more art trips, she says. Maybe the next one will involve design. Or puppets.

Either way, Mr. Jones is sure to go.