Rifle Air Show

February 4, 2012 by Sam

Finally we left Utah where we’d had such a great time, particularly in the national parks. We were excited to be moving on however with the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado to look forward to as well as Badlands in South Dakota. Leaving Utah we noticed the temperature lower and we actually had a rainstorm, the first time we’d had rain since possibly even Vancouver Island.

This is just a quick post with a few photos I took when we stayed in Rifle, Colorado and visited their annual air show (we went to the night time show).

However I have to mention that the small town of Rifle has an excellent visitors centre with a lovely helpful lady and they unofficially allow camper vans to stay overnight in their carpark and make use of their free WiFi, so hats off to Rifle.

Every Man’s Dream – The Jet Powered School Bus

Now to the air show, the highlight for me was this super awesome jet powered school bus. Paul Stender’s unique creation which on a good run is said to be able to reach an astonishing 361 MPH!

Kick Ass Jet Powered School Bus

For those of you who have been following along since the beginning you may well know that I’d attempted to buy a short-wheel base yellow school bus which had been converted to a camper for this US road trip. Something about a school bus camper tickles me the right way and I was extremely upset when the seller sold it to someone else despite my communicated interest. So when I saw this jet powered beast I was filled with mixed emotions, but mostly I was just thinking “Wow, that is awesome, I gotta get myself one of those!”.

Jet Powered School Bus Burn Out

Jet Powered School Bus Drag Run

More Air Show Highlights

There were plenty of planes to walk around and look at, various air displays to watch and as the evening progressed there was a pyrotechnic air display which was pretty awesome but I failed to catch any decent shots. This guy in this little plane dropped some pretty serious sounding explosives behind him on low runs over the landing strip. Another noteworthy display was the American Paratroopers who glided down after jumping out of planes with fire/smoke trails emitting from their boots (I gotta get myself some fire emitting boots!).