Bluebonnet Air Show flies into Burnet

BURNET, Texas - Quenching your need for speed was easy at this year's BlueBonnet Air Show in Burnet.

Almost every plane imaginable from A-10 warthogs to the Bluebonnet Belle took to the sky.

"Oh, it is amazing," said Lane Henphill, 14, who wants to become a pilot.  "I love planes."

Henphill loves stunt planes and this year's show was filled with death defying dives, twists and turns.

The mid-air maneuvers even had the littlest of spectators in awe.

"He is old enough now to enjoy it and he is really liking it," said Lafawn Ribera, who brought her son August,3, to the air show for the first time.  "I really want to see those big grey ones fly, the A-10s."

Hundreds of people just like the Ribera's crowded around the runway at Burnet Municipal Airport Saturday afternoon.  Many were close enough to see the planes fly right by them on the runway, others relied on high-powered binoculars and cameras to catch a glimpse of the planes.

"I took pictures of one of them doing the smoke," said Britny Lehmann, an amateur shutterbug who used her mother's I-phone to take pictures.

Seeing A-10s scream through the Hill Country air was not enough for Britny.  She wanted more than her pictures to take home and decided to have personalized dog tags made with her name and birth date on them.

"I thought they would look cool," Lehmann said as she held her dog tags in her hand.

There were many retired members of the military among the spectators.  Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sarah Allen and her daughter Evelyn were front and center in the crowd ready to see the show. Allen met her husband while enlisted in the Air Force.

He flew a B-25 at the show.

"I am not nervous," said Allen.  "This is part of our life."

Allen told KXAN she was a flight nurse and being at the air show reminded her of her 20 year career.

"I love the Air Force," Allen said.

The roaring engines didn't get everyone in the crowd going.  Others in attendance decided to hop into old military trucks and Jeeps to take a ride.

"I learned how to drive a straight shift on truck similar to this," said Donald Broyles, an Army retiree, as he pointed to an old Army truck.   "It was the old 2.5 ton, not this newer one behind me here."

Broyles, who is from Johnson City, has a son deployed in Afghanistan right now. 

Just two cars away, Matthew Edwards, who hopes to enlist in the Army when he gets older, sat inside an old military Jeep.

"I am going to Afghanistan," said Edwards as he played behind the wheel clad in a combat hat.  "I won't be driving these when I go in the Army."

When asked what type of Jeep he would drive, Edwards said, "Well, the future kind.  I will be more grown upper."

Edwards has at least another decade before he really decides to enlist.

It will be even longer before he can pilot anything with a license.