The state's largest city is Anchorage, where 40% of Alaska's population resides, but just outside are lakes and rivers with the bears and salmon in wilderness deeper than any you could find in the Lower 48. Chugach State Park is largely within the city limits, but it's the size of Rocky Mountain National Park and has similar alpine terrain, with the critical difference that most of it is virtually never visited. Yet you can be climbing those mountains after a half-hour drive from your downtown hotel. Chugach National Forest, the nation's second largest, is less than an hour down the road. In downtown's Ship Creek, people catch 40-pound salmon from under a freeway bridge. Within the city's urban neighborhoods you can bike dozens of miles along the coast or through wooded greenbelts, or ski one of the nation's best Nordic skiing parks.

Anchorage is indeed a big American city, but it's also entirely unique for being surrounded by pristine and spectacular wild lands and is one of America's greatest cities for outdoor enthusiasts.