Alaska

So I have been to Alaska once.  I think I was about 15 or so. We spent the first night in Anchorage, then a couple of days in Seward, and the last few days in Talkeetna.  On the way to Seward, we stopped at a place that let people pan for gold.  Of course we didn't find anything, and it's way harder than it looks.  In Seward, we went salmon fishing, and actually caught a few.  The boat was kinda small, so we were rocked around quite a bit.  The next day we went kayaking near a glacier.  We went on a boat for about an hour, around a point, and then towards the glacier, and got into the kayaks and went a bit closer.  We couldn't get too close for safety reasons, i.e. we needed to be far enough away to avoid any large chunks of ice breaking off.  On the way back, we saw a humpback whale and her calf breaching.  Normally, they do it only once or twice, but this one was doing it over and over again.  Our boat captain was radioing everyone in sight, telling them to come see.  A big tour boat captain declined, saying that he had a schedule to keep, but then the whale breached again, and the boat immediately angled for a better look.  We could actually see the boat tilting to the side with all the people wanting to see the whale.  We got some good video footage of the whale, and even the boat tilting.  Later on a pod of porpises started going with our boat, and I filmed that too.  It was then that we realized that I had filmed over the whale and tilting boat.  I have never lived that one down since.
In Talkeetna, we went on a bush plane up to Ruth Glacier, near the slopes of Mt. Mckinley, and got to walk around a bit.  We also went heli-rafting, where they took our raft and us up the river in a helicopter and then we rode the raft back to town.  We actually saw a moose while in the helicopter.  Where we stopped for lunch, there were fresh (very fresh) bear tracks on the river bank. 
We had a blast in Alaska.  Someday I hope to go back in the winter and see the northern lights.