Don't misunderstand. They are as giddy as anyone in Idaho about the commander in chief stopping by for his first trip to the Gem State in six years.

But they are a little wary of what will follow.

"We already have our plate full," says Mayor George Dorris, a retired Air Force pilot. "We don't need any more excitement."

Just after Bush's speech Monday in Salt Lake City to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention and before a rally with Idaho military personnel and their families today, the president, first lady and Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and his wife retired to the Tamarack adventure resort seven miles from Donnelly for a few days of recreation. Dozens of Secret Service agents, Idaho State Police officers and reporters followed, descending on the hamlet of 160 people and neighboring McCall.

For now, Donnelly's longtime residents can't help themselves. Blasé one minute as they brush off the flurry of activity in town, the next they rush outside to watch a black military helicopter sweep by overhead.

At Flight of Fancy Bakeshop, owner Susan Dorris, the mayor's wife, laughs as she ticks off the carb-laden breakfast treats - huckleberry muffins, cinnamon-raisin bread and brownies - she sent up the road to Tamarack at the executive chef's request. She wishes he had ordered her cheesecake, too.

Across the street at Vigilantes Restaurant, owner Renee Welch is irritated that her cook, who works two jobs - one in town and another at the resort - will have to stay on the mountain for security reasons. Tamarack employee movement has been restricted during the president's stay. At the same time, two wall-mounted televisions are tuned to a Boise television station's live coverage of the president's arrival.

"If he came in here, I'd tell him to get in the kitchen," Welch says. Then she sighs. "People are idiots around people like that. But it's good for my business."

All along Highway 55, from Cascade to McCall, marquees welcomed the president. "Welcome to Paradise, President Bush," said the sign at Donnelly's Stinker gas station. Near the resort, two poster boards were tacked to trees: "We love our country, our troops, our president," one said, with hearts drawn around the word "our."

Even in the tiny, two-room library attached to a thrift store, Bush critic Judy Sechrist invited first lady Laura Bush to stop by and read. "She's a great advocate for literacy," the retired schoolteacher said.

Dozens of residents of the Long Valley surrounding Donnelly trekked up the mountain Monday afternoon to lakefront campgrounds, hoping for a glimpse of Marine One, the president's helicopter, when it landed outside the alpine resort.

Boise retiree Barb Johnson donned her flashy flag visor and red-white-and-blue-striped polo shirt for the occasion. "When does the president land in your backyard?" Johnson asked. "You've got to go."

But some longtime valley residents are slightly uneasy about the event.

They worry Bush's two-day retreat is a sign of things to come, that the president's visit will only draw more attention to a tiny town struggling with the demands of a tony new resort and the tourists and second-home buyers who want to get close to it. A one-time sawmill town, Donnelly had become the undiscovered summer playground of Boise families.

That changed with the opening of Tamarack last year. In 2004, an acre of Donnelly pastureland sold for $6,000. This year, the price jumped to more than $40,000. Donnelly has 2,000 building permits for homes that can't be built yet because the town has no sewer treatment plant. Property values have risen so quickly, state legislators are meeting with residents in an attempt to hold off a property tax revolt. The natives complain of "Californication."

Such development pressure is common in rural, suddenly-trendy towns. But the president's visit to Tamarack also has political overtones in this part of Idaho. The $1.5 billion resort opened last year after a protracted legal battle with environmentalists, who opposed plans for 2,000 homes and condos, a golf course, ski area and marina on the shores of Cascade Reservoir. A Tamarack townhouse sells for more than $700,000. Tamarack construction workers have set up camp in Donnelly's RV park and taken all available temporary housing, driving up rents and pushing out many of the town's middle and working-class residents, the mayor says. He wonders whether the president's visit will help or hurt his town.

"We'll get a lot of lookie-loos - the rabid Republicans and the peaceniks. We'll sell a lot of beer and potato chips and gas," Dorris said. "He may be a real boon to the area. The damage has already been done."

Idaho Gov. Kempthorne, who invited the president, is a vocal advocate of the resort and received campaign donations from Tamarack's developers to settle his 2002 campaign debt, according to The Idaho Statesman. The governor owns property in the area.

Residents also wonder if a prominent rancher who was one of the first President Bush's supporters doesn't have something to do with this President Bush's visit.

"We're just peons here wondering why the president would come visit us," said Dorris. "Somebody made a campaign contribution. The president is repaying a favor."

While the mayor and some town residents are ambivalent about the president's sleepover, not so more than 100 peace activists who gathered Monday night at the town's "Flower People Park," named for the otherworldly figures constructed out of stacked baskets of planted flowers.

Carrying signs with statements like, "Support Our Troops - Go on Vacation!!" and "Hell No, My Son Won't Go," the protesters briefly doubled the population of Donnelly. Several made references to Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who has camped outside the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch, demanding a meeting with Bush. In the window of the First State Bank next door, an electric candle burned behind a scrap of paper with the words, "Cindy's son. Why?"

"We want a strategy for getting us out of Iraq," said Chuck Davis, a retired McGraw-Hill publishing house executive from McCall who organized the protest.

Cascade resident Robert Lambrou carried a sign playing on Bush's unusual five-week vacation: "Happy 50th Vacation Mr. Bush."

A Vietnam veteran, Lambrou blasted the president for taking a break while U.S. troops are still in harm's way. "President Bush was a no-show for Vietnam and he went on vacation for the war in Iraq," Lambrou said. "This is not right for a commander in chief."

When another black helicopter flew overhead, the crowd shook their signs at the sky. And they chanted, "We want peace."

Across the street at The Club, a woman yelled back, "So do we. Go home."