Anchorage, Alaska: A Big, Wild City

It’s a standing joke with the locals: If you live in Anchorage, Alaska, you’re “only 30 minutes away from the real Alaska.”

But Alaska’s biggest city isn’t quite like any other big city in the nation — and it makes a great stop for a couple of days, or a convenient base camp for exploring further afield. High points include its extensive green space (including hundreds of miles of trails in and around the city), cultural centers, and several noteworthy communities within a (long) day’s drive. They include Hope, Seward, Cooper Landing, Wasilla, and Palmer.

And if you like big-city comforts? Hey, this is a good place to be. But don’t forget that you’re in Alaska: It’s very common to see enormous moose ambling nonchalantly down the city streets, and you might even see a bear dart across the road or meet one on the city trails.

Anchorage’s population

As of 2018, Anchorage has a population of about 291,000 people, far outstripping the next-largest communities of Fairbanks and Juneau. But if you expand the figure to include all of the Anchorage municipality — including nearby communities like Eagle River and Girdwood — the population is close to half the entire state’s 730,000(ish) people.

Getting to Anchorage, Alaska

Yes, you can drive here from the Lower 48 — but the trip takes a solid week, or longer if you want to really see the sights.

You can make things a lot faster by flying in to the bustling Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which is served year-round by airlines including Alaska Airlines, Delta, United, and American, with seasonal service from many airlines including JetBlue, Sun Country, Condor, Iceland Air and Allegiant.

Anchorage is also on the Alaska Railroad’s passenger rail network, which connects to Seward, Whittier, Fairbanks, Denali National Park, Healy and Talkeetna, but does NOT connect to Canada or the Lower 48.

The Alaska Marine Highway state ferries are a great way to get around most of Alaska, but there is no ferry service to Anchorage, and it’s extremely rare that a cruise ship enters the port. A “cruise trip” to Anchorage usually consists of a land excursion from nearby ports — usually Seward or Homer.

Getting around in Anchorage

Anchorage does have rudimentary bus service. However, service is so limited that for all intents and purposes, you need to either rent a car while here or book activities that offer shuttle service from your hotel.

Even if activities don’t offer a hotel-specific shuttle, some will offer shuttles from the downtown area, which is where you’ll find the bulk of the nicer hotels.

Here’s another reason to rent a car: As long as you have your own wheels, you can use Anchorage as a great “base camp” for making day trips to the Matanuska Valley, Girdwood, Seward, Kenai and a variety of other communities and attractions.

Popular attractions in Anchorage

Cultural centers and museums: Anchorage has a variety of cultural centers and museums, chief among them:

• Alaska Native Heritage Center – one of the very best places for learning about the diverse and varied Alaska Native cultures that have been here since time immemorial. They on the northeast side of Anchorage, but offer a free shuttle service for visitors staying in downtown Anchorage.
• Anchorage Museum – make it a point to visit the Smithsonian Arctic Studies exhibit, and try to catch artists in residence if you can.
• Alaska Aviation Museum – located right on Lake Hood (the largest float plane base in the world), this museum offers flight simulators and a fascinating look into how much aviation has shaped our world.

Galleries and artisans: Anchorage’s downtown is bursting with a range of galleries where you can purchase everything from traditional Alaska Native art to fine paintings and charmingly kitschy souvenirs. There are some great galleries in other parts of town, too, but most of the tourist activity centers in the downtown area.

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center: This 200-acre facility is an open-air sanctuary/research/education facility that houses animals that are no longer to live in the wild for a variety of reasons. For people, it’s a great opportunity to walk or drive the 1.5-mile loop around the grounds, viewing the animals in snippets of their natural habitat and attending free educational sessions, or spring for a behind-the-scenes tour.

Although the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center isn’t actually in Anchorage, it’s just a short and incredibly scenic drive away (by Alaska standards). Budget at least an hour of drive time in each direction.

Popular activities in Anchorage

Hiking: Anchorage is smack in the middle of 495,000-acre Chugach State Park, which makes it the perfect home base for hiking. However, you’re going to need a car to reach those trails. With the exception of the Flattop Shuttle, there are no shuttle services to take you to and from the trailheads. You can take a taxi or Uber/Lyft, but it’s expensive and cell service can be sketchy at some of the trailheads.

City trails: If you’d rather stay in the city, the 12-mile Tony Knowles Coastal Trail is easily accessed from downtown Anchorage. It follows the coast of Cook Inlet until arriving in heavily forested Kincaid Park, where bear, moose and mountain bike encounters are very common; you decide for yourself whether that’s good or bad.

Renting a bike is a great way to explore this and the many other paved trails that criss-cross town; you’ll find a couple of bike rental shops downtown during the summer, located near 5th and L. For an interesting cross-section of city life, check out the Moose Loop.

Day cruises: If you want to get up early enough to take an Alaska Railroad train to Seward, you can enjoy one of several wildlife- and glacier-viewing day cruises.

Fishing: Downtown Anchorage comes complete with its very own salmon stream — Ship Creek — with a nearby bait shack ready to rent you appropriate gear and sell you a fishing license.

Be careful: Fishermen sometimes get stuck in Ship Creek’s slippery mud banks. If you have a rental car, you can also fish for salmon in nearby Bird Creek or make day trips to fish in the Mat-Su Valley.

You can also make day trips (via rental car) to Kenai, Soldotna or Seward for a half-day of fishing, although you’ll need to get up very early and once you add in the round-trip drive time, this makes for a very long day. If you want to take more than a half-day fishing trip, or if you just want to take it easy, I recommend planning to stay overnight in the community you fish out of.

Flightseeing: Take off on flightseeing day trips or overnight adventures from Lake Hood, the busiest seaplane base in the world, or the slightly more modest small airport of Merrill Field. Trip options include bear-viewing, a glacier landing on Denali (the mountain) and flightseeing around Denali (the national park).