Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers- Prison Area, Independance Valley Next Left.

I know where your potatoes come from. For those of you that know Ani, if you know her last name you know the Polish word for potato. Let her know you now know this bit of information.

The valleys through the mountians are expansive and when flat enough they are would be filled with potato crops during the warmer months.

Idaho cops cars have cool paint jobs, black with gold. I was admiring and acknowledging a trooper in a Charger parked in the emergency turn around in the middle of the highway as I passed. Then he immediately turned towards my lane and sped out onto the road. Oh, shit. I never speed, always signal lane changes and have every look of legality to my knowledge. This would not be good as my license expired on the 7th due to some messed up two year expiration. He got all the way up to my rear, slowed to check my plates, and held that position for a minute. No lights, and I changed lanes in front of him as I cam upon a semi. Idaho has front license plates like most states and I would believe that is why he pursued. That was close.

The snow and clouds made everything subdued and distant.

Valleys held clouds that had dropped from the mountains and created a mist on the croplands.

The mountains and crops stayed pretty much the same as I got into northern Utah.

When the clouds disappeared the sky was brilliant. The populated areas of Utah were coming up fast.

For those of you that care to know what Indianapolis will be like in years to come look to Salt Lake City. Indy always compares itself to Salt Lake in size, population, and suburban areas, and transit. Ogden is a little far from Salt Lake City, but commuters still make the treck.

I ran into one of these in southern California as well and they confuse me. To use the bathroom you have to have either a quarter or a special token to get in and use the restroom.

Salt Lake City is kind of bland, not packed downtown, and fades to houses and suburbs pretty quick, like Indy. BUT they have transit options.

The city's namesake is not visible from the city at all, maybe on the top floors of skyscrapers. Out of the city I found it very hard to view it there too. Here you can see, or rather not see, the lake. It blended with the sky entirely.

Other than on top of a bridge, the lake was very hard to see due to obstructions of all kinds. Train tracks, concrete barricades, guard rails, rock, it all hid the lake.

To the west of the lake is the Great Salt Lake Desert. It is mostly a completely flat salty layer. Pools of water between the roads created mirrors.

The last mountains at a close distance left soon after the city.

The brush filled the land and I was surprised not to see just a white layer of salt that went on forever.

I saw what looked like sand. Apparently it is really wet and the salt just looks like sand. I kept seeing rocks in weird arrangements and realized that they all were drawings and writings made of rocks and glass bottles. I'm not sure if you can see it from satellite, but next to I-80 in the desert look for words along the roadside.

Train tracks rose above the salt and let pools of water stand.

Now other than it was really tacky, it was nice to see such a large obnoxious public art piece in the desert.

Tire tracks were all over the side of the road. The mountians came up from the mist and looked painted on the sky.

Snow covered this portion of the salt.

Areas of risen land bulldozed created different drier areas. the flat sand-like area before turned to a dry cracked salt layer after.

Even drier and more cracked salt afterward. The Bonneville salt flats weren't far away.

A really large mountain greeted me into Nevada.

The tracks that I have been seeing weaved in and out of the mountains. The red, green and white reminded me of the season.

The light faded and darkened every hue.

My day was ending with mountains again surrounding me.

I was heading straight West and the sun did not let me have a moment without letting me know this. No matter what I did the visibility was terrible.

I got to Elko, Nevada and looked for a place to stay. It is a little casino town in the middle of the state. The Thunderbird acknowledged the areas history, and the "White King" ironically let you know who was around now.

It will take me another day to get to Reno. I am looking forward to getting closer to my destination again and finally getting time to just rest. I think of the good times I have had on this trip and certain things remind me of before, like the potatoes. I am glad that I have some sort of closure, but of course I would have preferred to still been able to talk like friends. Damn potatoes.

Lewis and Clark was a gay parody of Superman right?

Montana makes such a big deal about Lewis and Clark having gone through the state. There are so many signs and markers and info about them everywhere. I bet they had one hell of a time getting through this incredibly large area.

I enjoy manipulated trees even though I don't understand why they have to be trimmed.

So you've seen piles of broken palettes or ones in dumpsters. Some of the trees that are cut go to make more! This world needs to get its head out of its ass. The color is nice though.

The trip to Yellowstone had only a backtrack available for travel. Winter makes roads impassable, and I always want to take new routes to see new landscapes.

The weather was a little different.

Snow moving up and over peaks never gets old.

The plains extend all the way through Montana and are very heavily grazed.

The land changes pretty rapidly and varies from sides of the road.

Trees pretty much vanished. Rolling hills with mountains in the background continued the whole way through the state.

Montana pride!

Look at that Stealth Fighter above the mountain. Well it's a bird.

A large iced over lake had ice fishermen shacks all over. A little flow to the lake created a fissure with large ice blocks gathered up.

These hills kept catching my attention. They are so beautifully snow covered.

There is absolutely no way to keep my widows clean. The roads are filthy, every car that passes shoots up salty water, and I have no wiper fluid. Someone before I had the Sunfire put water in the wiper fluid reservoir and let it freeze, this cracks the plastic and doesn't let it hold fluid.

The light on the bare grass were great.

The darkness of clouds make mountains almost black at times.

The mountains were always in the background and ripped through the clouds.

As soon as I crossed into Idaho trees started to show themselves. A really low cloud intrigued me ahead. The elevation was rather high, but the cloud looked like it straddled the ground.

And then I was IN the cloud.

It was really cool. The atmosphere covered everything a hundred feet away from wherever I moved. It was neat to be able to see everything around me.

The distances that were present created a lot of variety.

Even though the clouds did not cover the entire sky in Montana, when I got out of the cloud itself the sky looked so much more saturated.

I've seen all the low lying clouds hugging the mountains, and now I've been in one.

The valley rose again and I entered another cloud.

What I am guessing are wind screens vibrated against each other when they crossed one another. Since Kansas there have been wind and snow screens along the roadside.

After a while I was on top of a plateau. It was so flat and covered in potato farms. I was as high as the mountains so they even disappeared.

Hay, what did you get me for Christmas? So I was notified that Christmas is a week away. So far I have been dealing with my breakup and breakdown since before Halloween. I'm glad I've come this far and have seen so much beauty in the world. I hope that everyone that is reading is given a kick in the butt to see what beauty this world has to offer.