Alaskan Viewpoint Lodge closes its doors for good

By Alistair Gardiner, [email protected] 

Bill and Terry Beaudoin opened their bed and breakfast Alaskan Viewpoint Lodge on July 1 2015. Early this year when the couple arrived back to Alaska from Washington, where they winter, the lodge had plenty of bookings. Over the next few months the bulk of those reservations were canceled, as the coronavirus outbreak grew from epidemic to pandemic. 

Last month they decided to close their doors for good and sell the property. 

“We weren't really trying to make a lot of money, we were just trying to enjoy Alaska and be a venue for other people to enjoy Alaska,” Bill Beaudoin said. 

The Beaudoins' lodge, which is situated on Pickering Drive, is high up on Chena Ridge. It has five bedrooms and a wraparound deck offering a panoramic view of the Alaska Range and the valley below. Guests received a hot breakfast and high-speed Wi-Fi for $130 to $180 per night. 

The lodge was listed as the No.1 rated B&B in Fairbanks on Tripadvisor for the last three years - and is still listed as such, despite its closure. 

Beaudoin said that the lodge has at least broken even every year it's been open, but that he knew that would not be the case this year or again in the near future. 

“Life, you know. You take a risk, you try something out,” he said. “You do as long as it works and if it doesn't work you try something else.”

Beaudoin has lived in Alaska on and off since he was a child, when his father was serving in the Air Force. 

“He wanted to stay and homestead, but my mom said no;” he joked.

Beaudoin's work, both as a submariner with the Navy and in education, brought him back to the state throughout his life. He's spent time in Dutch Harbor, Cold Bay, False Pass, Ketchikan, on Prince of Wales Island and on the North Slope. As a teacher and later a principal, he worked at the school in Two Rivers and later at Hutchison High School, as well as schools in Cantwell and Anderson. 

“I always liked Alaska,” he said. “I could never understand why my parents wanted to leave anyway.”

After spending a few years in Oregon and Washington, Beaudoin was hiking along the Denali Highway in 2013 and trying to come up with an excuse to spend more time in Alaska. 

According to a July, 2017 Daily News-Miner article about Alaskan Viewpoint Lodge, Beaudoin was staying in bed-and-breakfasts at the time and wondered if it was possible to set one up himself. He drove to the Barnes & Noble in Anchorage and bought “Running a Bed-and-Breakfast for Dummies.” Two years later, he and Terry purchased the 2,800-square-foot house on Chena Ridge, gutted the downstairs and added bedrooms. 

For five years, the lodge was open from March to October and offered guests a dose of pure Alaskana. Its rooms were named after trees – Alaska Paper Birch, White Spruce, Black Spruce, Quaking Aspen and Mountain Alder. The Beaudoins used local ingredients in the meals they .served. Some of the popular breakfast dishes served at the inn included reindeer sausage casserole with mushrooms and tomatoes, and smoked Alaskan salmon casserole. The lodge featured a library full of books about Alaska and the work of local artists, like Sandy Jamieson, hung on the walls. 

While Tripadvisor reviews and ratings testify to guests' satisfaction, Beaudoin spoke of the pleasure he and his wife had in running the place. 

“The whole advantage of running a BnB is you get to meet people from all over the world. You get to be their host and you hear their stories. And we met some amazing people. Experts in their field;” he said, noting that they frequently hosted guests who were in town for conferences. 

“The BnB is full of scientists studying the Arctic,” he said. “And here they are in my living room and I get to talk to them!” 

According to Beaudoin, the summer season allowed the couple to pay the bills, but the Lodge wasn't profitable. When guests started canceling their bookings this spring, he realized it wasn't just part of the year that the lodge would be out of action – it was likely the summer and fall too. 

“The deal was we would do this as long as it wasn't costing us a lot of money, and all of a sudden it was going to cost us a lot of money.” he said. 

With housing prices high and interest rates low, the couple began thinking about whether they should sell the lodge. Initially, Beaudoin said, he wasn't ready to part with the property. But after a real estate agent showed some interest and made an offer, he found himself reconsidering. 

“I started taking a harder look at it and I thought: The Alaska economy is unstable, I'm not a big fan of our governor, I think he's ripping the infrastructure apart” Beaudoin said. “I don't like the way it's going. People are going to start leaving Alaska, and the housing prices are going to collapse.”

The sale of the Beaudoins property is due to be finalized at the end of May. Beaudoin said they're planning on settling back in Washington. He's thinking about building a greenhouse and intends to go hiking more often. 

“It's sad. I don't want to leave Alaska. I love Alaska. But you've got to look at what has been handed to you. You don't get to deal your own hand,” he said. “If this whole pandemic thing didn't happen and we'd just had a regular season this year, we would have just continued doing that.” 

If you receive an email from Bill Beaudoin, his sign off includes a few lines written by Edward Abbey: “What then is frontier? That forgotten country where men and women live with and by and for the land, in self-reliant communities of mutual aid, in a spirit of independence, magnanimity, and trust.”

This is the Alaska that Beaudoin said he'll miss. 

“It's an amazing place, as you well know,” he said. “I love Washington state too, but it's not Alaska.”