One of the top 5 attractions in Anchorage, the Alaska Aviation Museum is special. Each aircraft and artefact holds a fascinating, relevant, meaningful Alaska history back story. As a state with few transportation options over a vast territory, aviation developed a rich and textured legacy. The Alaska Aviation Museum is located on the world’s busiest seaplane base, Lake Hood, at Anchorage International Airport. Open daily 9 am-5 pm during the summer, it’s a substantial museum boasting 4 hangars of exhibits and vintage aircraft (over 25 vintage aircraft in flying condition on display). (Follow website or Facebook for winter hours.) Outdoor exhibits; Restoration hangar (watch volunteers at work restoring vintage aircraft); Control tower (watch seaplanes land and take off, including live real-time radio tower feed); Flight simulators, including full-immersion virtual reality; World-class gift store. Allow 1½ to 2 hours for a visit. https://www.anchorage.net/listings/alaska-aviation-museum/35730/
A trip to the Alaska Botanical Garden will dispel any thoughts you might have that Alaska’s harsh climate allows only a few hardy species of plants and trees to grow. Step into this wonderland and you’ll be amazed to see the lushness and variety of species that thrive here.
Explore the hardy perennials that flourish in Southeast Alaska, like poppies, iris, Asiatic lilies, and roses. Walk through the rock garden, with its 350-plus species of alpine plants. Check out the herb garden, where you can ask volunteers questions when they’re around, and get a sense of Alaskan history in the Anchorage Heritage Garden, a recreation of an old-style local garden where you can see vegetables, annuals, and perennials that were typically grown here in the first half of the 20th century. The produce grown is donated to local food banks. http://www.alaska.org/detail/alaska-botanical-garden
Located in the historic 4th Avenue Market Place in downtown Anchorage, the Alaska Experience Theatre’s Earthquake Exhibit and Safe-Quake Theatre experience take you back in time to 1964 on the fateful Good Friday when North America recorded it largest earthquake ever at a magnitude of 9.2. https://www.anchorage.net/listings/alaska-experience-theatre/39062/
Alaska's largest museum, the Anchorage Museum tells the real story of the North. The twisting story, the unsuspected story, the many-faceted story- a story that weaves together social, political, cultural, scientific, historic and artistic threads. Explore the full diversity of Alaska Native cultures, including masterworks of Alaska Native art and design from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. The Art of the North galleries in the museum’s new wing present the museum’s art collection from the perspectives of American art and an international North. Paintings, sculpture, photography, video and other media offer varied perceptions of the Northern landscape and wilderness through historical and contemporary depictions of both land and people. The new Alaska Exhibition tells the story of Alaska through multiple voices and perspectives reflecting the ingenuity, technology, ways of knowing and intimate understanding of the landscape that have allowed people to survive and thrive across the North. The exhibition is organized by 13 themes reflecting essential aspects of life in Alaska, both today and throughout the state’s rich history. These themes reveal the identity of Alaska and its people. Discover Alaska and the Arctic through science. In the 11,000-square-foot Discovery Center, visitors of all ages are introduced to Alaska and the Arctic through technology, interactive installations, artwork, marine-life tanks and more. Space is divided into several distinct areas, each providing an opportunity to learn about our Northern environment. https://www.anchorage.net/listings/anchorage-museum/36698/