a ship inside the museum

And you actually get to take the wheel.

The Anchorage Museum just opened a new exhibit that drops you inside a famous Alaska research ship. They recreated a whole section of the icebreaker that the University of Alaska runs out of Seward.

You walk in surrounded by deep blue, then stop at microscope stations to look at real plankton up close. Kids and adults get sketching tables and a gallery of Arctic illustrations. Then you head up to the bridge and sit in the captain's chair.

A ceiling-high screen plays the open ocean right in front of you. It shifts from calm water to stormy swells to broken chunks of sea ice. It's about as close as most of us will get to actually sailing the Arctic.

The whole exhibit is really about the science and the people who study our northern waters. It's open now through next spring, so we've got all summer to swing by.