To everybody who said they want to see Alaska, I highly recommend it. I spent two weeks there last year. Flew into Anchorage and hitchhiked around the Kenai Penninsula. We got there on the first day of summer so it never really got dark. We hiked on a glacier, kayaked in the ocean where we see whales surfacing, watched salmon spawn, had bald eagles fly right over my head, saw moose walking right through town, encounterd 4 bears in the wild including a grizzly from about 25' away. Oh my god, it was incredible, writing about it makes me want to get back there as soon as possible. I'm not sure how much I would like the winters, but the summer was amazing and I only saw a small part of the state.