And we see this giant pillar of smoke; waaay into the air. So I'm thinking it's some kind of crazy road work or something.

Wrong. About ~.5 mile down the road we come across a crown vic (?) that is flat out ablaze. Flames engulfing the entire front end of the car. It was on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road, and I'm in the left lane on my side. (so, what, roughly 3-4 "lanes" between us.) I could FEEL the heat off of this car, I was sweating, assholes decided to rubberneck and leave us sitting right "beside" this BURNING CAR.

The fire truck got there just as we did and traffic started to move but from what I could see only 1 person was in the car when it went up and she was out now. So what did I do? I took a picture on my cell phone. If I can figure out how to get it online, I'll post it.

When we came back by (~4 hours later) there was just a small pile of ashes and "car parts."