Page 36 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – May 2020

Finding the
Heart of Alaska
iStock/Cappan
There is plenty to do when you head north.
C ruising the Inside Passage of Alaska is one thing, but to truly see the heart of Alaska,
you need to go farther north.
The best place to start would be Anchorage, Alaska.
You could either fly in to begin your journey or cruise here, crossing the Gulf of Alaska after sailing the Inside Passage. Either way, let Anchorage be the gateway to your adventures.
While in Anchorage, check out the Alaska Native Heritage Center as a launching point to learn about Native Alaskans. Besides exhibitions, it also has a display of indigenous housing. If you are traveling with children, they will enjoy the Discovery Center in the Anchorage Museum, where you can learn about the northern lights, earthquakes (Alaska has about 1,000 per month) and tidal pools in a hands-on environment.
During your journeys around Anchorage, be on the lookout for moose. There are estimated to be
By John T. Garcia
more than 1,000 of these members of the deer family in the area. If you want to see one and don’t while wandering around, head to the Alaska Zoo Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, where you are sure to see one.
Did you know that the largest national park in the United States is less than a four-hour drive from Anchorage? Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve encompasses 13.1 million acres and includes the Malaspina Glacier, which, at a size of more than 1,400 square miles, is larger than Rhode Island. The park is popular with ice climbers, hikers (both day and overnight) and mountain climbing, as nine of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. are in the park.
Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park also is home to Kennecott, considered the best remaining example of early 20th-century copper mining. Deposits of the commodity brought miners to Alaska in 1900 and
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