I left Reno late - about 10:00am. Heading east, the clouds begin to gather and the sky darkened. Around the highway, lightening flashed and you could see sheets of rain in the distance.

The wind was blowing and dust devils appeared here and there in the plains. One particularly audacious devil seemed to parallel my car at one point. It's presence said: One more tree down in the forests of Brazil and I would be a tornado instead. And you and your little aluminum can would be tossed into the next county. Hee Hee.

The storm broke on both sides of the road, but the freeway itself was remarkably free of rain. Just when I thought I would miss out of my first thunderstorm driving experience, a wall of gray crossed the road. Wet. Very wet. Lots of lightening too.

Thunderstorm photo

The thunderstorm was fun, but the salt blizzard in Utah, with visibility reduced to about 2 feet was a bit intimidating.

Salted in the shell, Shelley. That's me.

Worst part of today's drive was somehow getting in the middle of a biker gang - and this was a gang, not Sunday bike riders - who were playing chicken with a trailer-less semi. I was surrounded by bikers, trying to avoid the semi as it would cross back and forth across the freeway. Ugly, ugly and very scary. As soon as a path cleared, I hit the gas - I had to exceed 100 MPH in order to finally get away from this group. I'll be honest and say I didn't particularly care if a cop stopped me at that point.

Other than this bit of macho bullshit, drive was nice and I'm in Salt Lake City. I'm taking a break from driving tomorrow. Hopefully more pics for you Sunday.

BTW, the ThreadNeedle discussion is getting quite interesting - stop by and add your 0.02. I'm particularly interested in people's take on "filtering" out posts from a discussion. My first take was "no way", but now...is there room for regular and extra-crispy in ThreadNeedle?

Quick: Look for the faces in the photo (answers provided tomorrow, winner to be checked for drugs.)