What city is obviously missing from the map?

Dissing the land of ice and snow

Amid all the reported concern about global warming and deadly heat waves, one might have thought Alaska or at least, Minnesota – the state trying to rebrand itself as the “True North” – would score some points as a perfect summer vacation destination in these times.

But it would appear that WalletHub, the “personal finance platform,” has missed all the warnings, not to mention the fear, of deadly summer heat waves, and is directing people toward the hottest parts of the country.

Its list of “Best Summer Travel Destinations (2026) is led by Atlanta; Orlando, Fla.; Austin, Texas; and muggy Washingyton, D.C. and  eight of the top-10 cities on the list are south of the Mason-Dixon line, if you count Honolulu, which comes in at number five.

Honolulu is an interesting choice in that WalletHub says it has compiled a list of places that “offer the most bang for your buck” and “are also easy to reach.”

Anchorage, which is as easy to reach as Honolulu, maybe easier, doesn’t even rank among the 100 cities on the list in total, and it’s as cheap as Honolulu or cheaper. Why it didn’t make the list is hard to tell becuase WalletHub only provides data for the metrics on the 100 cities that it did rank.

In fairness to Honolulu, too, the trade winds do take the edge off summer, daytime temperatures in the mid- to high 80s, and as Google’s AI notes, “Honolulu summer evenings are delightfully mild, dropping from daytime highs in the mid-to-upper 80s to very comfortable nighttime lows around 72 to 75 degrees.”

And for those who don’t like the daytime heat, the “Hawaii Summer Heat Survival Guide for Tourists” advises that relief can be found in the high country. The guide was clearly not written by the state tourism bureau.

“Honolulu’s August average daily high sits around 88 to 89 degrees per NOAA’s 30-year normals,” it says. “Warm, but nothing that screams danger to a mainland visitor scrolling the forecast. Then they step off the Diamond Head trail at 11 a.m. with an empty water bottle and 70-percent-plus humidity locking the sweat to their skin, and suddenly the math gets ugly.”

Friendlier climes

One need worry little about “humidity locking the swest to their skin” in Anchorage. Yes, there are days when a tourist would be advised to hit the trail to Flattop Mountain – the Diamond Head of Alaska’s largest city – with a full water bottle. But the average daytime temperature in July is 67 to 68 degrees, a much more comfortable temperature for a hike, and although it can still get hot if that “midnight sun” is burning brightly, Anchorage seldom has enough humidity to make the air muggy.

Anchorage might seem an obvious choice for a U.S. summer travel destination, at least to Alaskans. But it clearly took a hit in this competition when WalletHub used its previous “Cities with the Best & Worst Weather” to tally the travel destination scores.

Anchorage was in a collection of cities tied for 91st in that ranking, which meant it wasn’t going to get much love in the 18 of 100 points based on weather. And never you mind that it scored so low in that previous ranking because of its winters, which don’t factor into summer travel.

Of course, there were other categories in which the city rightly struck out.

The “Safety” category, for instance,  rewarded cities with low property crime rates and a general lack of violent crime. Anchorage is today a city where anything that isn’t locked down is likely to be stolen, and its violent crime rate is almost twice the national median.

Neighborhood Scout calculates that Anchorage is safer than 4 percent of U.S. cities, which – unfortunately – means it’s more dangerous than 96 percent of cities, though it doesn’t seem so.

Whatever the case, you can probably figure it got zero points for safety and maybe one for weather, which put it at a 27-point deficit even before WalletHub started looking at “Travel Costs & Hassles,” “Local Costs,” “Attractions and Activities.”

That said, if it makes Anchorage readers feel better, Seattle came in last in the “Local Costs” category, which factored in the general cost of living, average gas prices, room rates for the three-star hotels, and average meal prices for two people dining out.

There was one gas station in Seattle reported to be selling gas at $5.99 per gallon today. All the rest were $6 or more. Gas could be found in Anchorage for almost a dollar less per gallon, but with the average at $5.29 gallon, according to American Automobile Association (AAA), Anchorage was almost 75 cents above AAA’s national average.

Anchorage always gets a bad rap for its cost of living, but it’s not as bad as it’s often portrayed. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data puts it only about 16 percent higher than the national average, with a big chunk of that due to high costs for housing and health care.

So Anchorage would probably come in somewhere in the middle of that category in the WalletHub scoring. Give it nine of the 18 points and add another nine to the deficit to bring it to 36.

This would mean that Anchorage would need to score a lot of points in the other categories to get into the running for the top 100 travel destinations, and most of these categories aren’t exactly Anchorage-friendly. Flying in and out of Anchorage is always a bit of a hassle unless you’re going to the few Lower 48 cities to which there are direct flights, and the flights are all long.

As for driving, forget about it unless you want a real adventure. The state’s largest city is days away from the rest of the U..S. by road.

At best, Anchorage might score in the middle in this category, so let’s go all liberal and give nine points while adding another nine to the deficit. It now stands at 45. If Anchorage aced every other category, it could beat out Cleveland at number 61 on the WalletHub list.

But the city is doomed in the “Attractions” category where WalletHub reported using “the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which is a commonly accepted measure of market concentration that also works effectively as a general-purpose measure of diversity.”

Anchorage comes in 75th of 100 WalletHub cities on that list. Figure that good for about 4.5 points of the 18 available points, which adds another  13.5 to the deficit to bring it to 58.5. This means that Anchorage would have to rack up all the points in the remaining two categories to outscore “Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.”, to claim the title of the 100th best summer travel destination.

Say what?

Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Venture? That just sort of rolls off your tongue as a travel destination, right?

Shouldn’t travel “destinations” be limited to one word like London, Milan, Alaska or, at the maximum, two works like San Francisco or New York.

Anchorage has Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Venture beat hands down in this regard, but a sensible name for the destination isn’t on the list by which WalletHub measured. “Activities” is, but fishing (in what other major U.S. city can you catch a king salmon?), bear watching, glacier touring, sightseeing, or mountain climbing aren’t there, and the scoring offers only 0.73 points for hiking, parks and other activities.

There is another 0.73 points for “beer gardens,” where Anchorge might score OK, but nothing for “cannabis lounges and cafes” where the city might score even better. Anchorage pretty much strikes out in a bunch of the other 0.73-point categories listed under Activities:

• Prevalence of Affordable Restaurants with Ratings of 4.5+ Stars? Not many.
• Amusement Parks per Capita? That would be a big, fat zero.
• Presence on TripAdvisor’s “Top 25 Amusement & Water Parks”? Right. Anchorage has H20 Oasis, an indoor water park, but it’s more water than amusement and didn’t make the list.
• Golf Courses and Country Clubs per Capita? Well, there is one, and a pair of par threes. Do they even ocunt?
• Tennis Courts per Capita? The city has more of those than golf courses, but not a whole lot more.
• Public Beaches per Capita? There miles and miles of “beach” along Turnagain and Knik Arms, but people are advised to stay away from it becuase of the risk of getting stuck in the mud and drowning when the tide comes in.
• Water Temperature? Great for beluga whales covered in blubber. Not so good for humans. No points there.

Now, the city might do fairly well in the long list of other activities, but what it doesn’t have has already moved it out of the 100 places to visit this summer.

And there is no B4YouDie category to help boost the city in the standings. No points for “adventures of a lifetime.” No score for safe from death by global warming. And forget about any consideration as the doorstep to America’s last great wilderness.

Anchorage’s low ranking is unlikely to make the promoters of the state’s biggest business, organizations like th the Anchorage Visitors & Convention Bureau and the Alaska Travel Industry Association. But both are expecting a slight uptick in the number of people who now journey north every summer and leave more than $2 billion behind in Alaska when they depart.

Not all Alaskans are happy about that, of course. There is a segment that views one tourist as one too many, They’ll probably be happy that Anchorage didn’t make the WalletHub list because, in their view, the best place for Americans to vacation this summer is “anywhere but here.”