The students in my last class at the Valdez Quilt Festival were nice enough to take a short lunch and let me leave town at 3:30 PM which meant that I was in daylight for the majority of the drive back to Anchorage. This should be a 6 hour drive. I stopped to take lots of photos on the way to Valdez so it took longer to get there. It took me 5 hours to make the return trip! I only stopped twice on the way back – and I drove faster.

It was clear and the skies were blue. I saw the mountains that were shrouded in the clouds when I drove to Valdez. The trees were even more beautiful. The photos don't do them justice.

There were mountains lining the drive the entire way. Sometimes they
were close and roads were very winding – at other times the peaks were
farther away. My rental car was small-ish with a tight suspension and some get-up-and-go. It was fun to drive! It would have been more fun in a sports car – not safer, of course, but more fun.

The gold treetops glowed in the green. I took this photo at a 'photo stop'. It was an impressive peak.

There was a stretch of what looked like aspens. They stood out because of the white tree trunks. Some had gold leaves and others, like the one below, had not yet turned.

These had turned…

I watched for moose and bear by the road. Didn't see any. I did see a massive number of vehicles that obviously belonged to hunters. They were all attached to flatbed trailers which puzzled me until I saw some hunters speeding along off the road on 4-wheelers equipped with huge rifle holsters. In one area they were so dense that I wondered if they ran along in packs (the hunters, that is) chasing moose.