President Dwight Eisenhower declared Alaska a State on 3 January, 1959

Anchorage is home to 300,000 people, about half the population of Alaska. It is a surprisingly large and spread out city, reasonably flat and very cosmopolitan. It has a great vibe and exudes character with none of the backwoods Hicksville I expected.

Downtown Anchorage

Alaska Railway Headquarters

There is a lot to see and do here and it would be great to spend at least a few weeks in both summer and winter to see what the city is really like.

As forecast it was a gloriously warm and sunny day and hard to decide just how to spend our one day here. After a look around town and the somewhat shabby waterfront we decided the Heritage Center was the place for the afternoon.

The waterfront

That left just enough time for the two remaining quilt shops to be explored while Peter and I checked out the Aviation Museum and the airport. I have never seen so many light aircraft on one field. There are almost more planes than cars with a great number being sea planes.

This is one of about 10 parking places plus all the sea planes at various moorings on all the lakes and rivers here.

There is a lake adjacent to the airport that is controlled by the same air traffic controllers as the international airport. I was watching for about 20 minutes while listening to the air traffic controller. There were 4 separate runways being used on the lake, often several at the same time. Planes were buzzing around like flies with a few 737 and 747 eagles among them.

The museum was quite interesting but a lot of the planes were in very poor condition, with one literally pulled out of a lake and put on display. There was a lot of history of aviation in Alaska which was hair raising at best. Most of the early pioneers died on the job.

There was also a lot of history on the Japanese invasion and subsequent battles on the Aleutian Islands of 1942 & 1943 of which I was totally ignorant.

We then caught up with the girls and headed out to the Alaskan Heritage Centre. There is a practice session for the Indian Games, a tour of the different communities, and some cultural dancing.

This is very difficult. The object is to touch the ball while balancing the body on one hand. The world champion has a 7 ft arm span.

The tour through the various native villages was very interesting and showed the skill and intelligence of the natives. The quality of their building without nails and screws and design of kayaks is unsurpassed today.

I have to say that the native dances were repetitive. Even after the movements were explained in some detail the last 3 looked and sounded like the first three.

The headdress was good.

Collette has come down with a very nasty cold which the rest of us are now waiting with dread to see who will be next. She had fought on bravely to this point but now desperately needed bed. So a quick visit to the grocer for dinner and home for the night.

Tomorrow we drive down the Kenai Peninsular to Homer, a 4 hour trip. The peninsular is supposed to be more great scenery and lots of animals so we will see how we go.

St Innocent Russian Orthodox Cathedral, built in 1967.