Seeking Alaska's Past

You won't find this one in many guidebooks, but if you're a trucker or perhaps a train buff, visiting the Alaska Museum of Transportation and Industry just north of Wasilla on the Parks Highway is worth an afternoon on your trip to Alaska.

The splendidly refurbished exhibits are kept indoors while the stuff that's too large for the building or awaiting restoration is kept outdoors. This 1930s-era Kenworth truck is one of the museum's meticulously restored vehicles. Next to it are a unique Ford Model-T pickup--unique because it is painted red--and a number of other vehicles and aircraft. Outdoors are whole trains, airplanes, boats and much more. There's even a 1917 bulldozer that yours truly helped the National Park Service find in the ghost town of Glacier in 1980--and it still runs.