Alaska Museum of Natural History & Anchorage Museum

This afternoon we went to the Alaska Museum of Natural History. We paid $5 each for admittance to the museum. The first display was one of rocks and minerals.

From Alaska Museum of Natural History

There were displays of animals and birds that are native to Alaska.

From Alaska Museum of Natural History

We saw fossils and dinosaur skeletons.

From Alaska Museum of Natural History

We even got to see what we would look like in Eskimo clothing.

From Alaska Museum of Natural History

From Alaska Museum of Natural History

Our next stop was at the Anchorage Museum.

From Anchorage Museum

We found a parking lot across the street from the museum and paid $3 for 2 hours parking. We paid $21 each (senior tickets) which included the special exhibit Mammoths & Mastodons ($12 each).

We rode the elevator up to the 4th floor to see the photographic collection called “All That Glitters: Images from the Alaska Gold Rush” with photos from the museums archives depicting the the struggles and lives of the miners.

On the 3rd floor was the exhibit from the Field Museum in Chicago, Mammoths & Mastodons. We saw life-size displays of a mastodon,

From Anchorage Museum

an Ice Age Bear,

From Anchorage Museum

and a replica of month-old “Lyuba”, the most complete mammoth specimen ever found.

From Anchorage Museum

The 2nd floor was the Arctic Studies on loan from the Smithsonian and the Alaska History Gallery. This is an immense display of clothing, baskets, art, tools and weapons from the 11 Alaska native cultures. There was so much to see it was impossible to get photos of everything, plus the lighting was low so as to not damage the artifacts. Photos could be taken as long as no flash was used. We took photos of the displays that we felt wouldn’t be too dark.

From Anchorage Museum

From Anchorage Museum

In the Alaska History Gallery we saw displays of the early pioneers, more displays on the Alaska Gold Rush, the influence of the railroad, the military and war in Alaska, the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, Alaska Statehood, and the Alaska pipeline.

From Anchorage Museum

We saw so much I can’t put it all in here. Just visit our photo album of the Anchorage Museum to see a portion of what we saw.

On the way back to the RV, we stopped at a Papa John’s and had a pizza for dinner.