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You get the style of a boutique hotel and the friendly service of a B&B—set on 68 acres of gorgeous wilderness. The four-room, log-cabin-style Matanuska Lodge, 100 miles from Anchorage, is not a B&B in the traditional, or frilly sense: Decorated in the spirit of an edgy boutique hotel, the Matanuska walks the line between urbane and rustic. Outside your window, you get a playground, too, with hiking trails and a 40-acre lake, all set against the Matanuska Glacier and the Saddlenotch mountains.
Rooms come with creature comforts: sleek bathrooms with whirlpool tubs, funky furniture, Native art, radiant heat floors and ceiling fans. As a guest, you get a daily breakfast—like omelettes, frittatas, hot breads and fresh fruit—as well as hors d’oeurves in the evening. If you want dinner, too, just tell your hosts what you like—they can prepare fish, lamb or whatever sounds good to you. If you’re heading out for activities during the day, they can even pack you a picnic lunch to take along.
And there’s plenty to keep you busy if you want to stay active. You get complimentary use of the lodge’s canoes, paddleboats and kayaks on the lake (which is no more than 10 feet deep). Or, you can walk the trail and check out wildlife such as moose, swans, loons, and all manner of birds. Come in August and you can check out all the wildflowers or pick blueberries. During the winter, it’s a great spot for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Inside, you can hang out in the game room, sit in the hot tub on the deck, or use the spotting scope to look for Dall’s sheep on the mountainside or moose in the yard.
To get more of challenge, the hosts can hook you up with local outfitters for river rafting, ice climbing or glacier hikes. The Alaskan hosts say they just want guests to be happy: Since the Lodge is so small, they say they’ll even group bookings by which guests they think will mesh well, based on their interests or where they’re traveling from.
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