Everywhere we went on our trip we were told it was the last ... of the season. Last cruise, Last tour, Last excursion etc etc etc, it became a running joke with our group. So now that we've gotten back home we've decided to give you our Last Blog of the Season, as a fitting finish to the wonderful time we had on our Alaskan Honeymoon.

Our Bests and Worsts

Best Meal - Looking at overall meal enjoyment including company our best meal would have to be our last meal in Fairbanks with Ken and Sue. Even though it cost us an arm and 2 legs, it was great fun and fab food.

Best Excursion - Helicopter flight over Glaciers in Juneau.

Best Scenery - Glacier Bay - the whole bay was awesome with the glaciers everywhere you looked, and so totally quiet you never once thought you were on a ship holding 4000 people.

Best Little Town - Skagway

Best Big Town - Vancouver

Best Flight - From London to Vancouver - eating ice cream while flying over Greenland and seeing all the icebergs.

Worst Flight - All the rest!

Most Amusing Characters We Met - We didn't meet them but we had nick names for them for sure! Turkey - nutcase old Japanese/American lady who had ants in her pants everytime we saw her. Never sat still. Brandin gave her the nickname because of her hair (who knows!). She had wiry thin hair, that was sprayed every day to within an inch of its life and put into an up pointy style like a conehead. We even got photos showing the light coming through the up do. Say no more. The other couple we named were the Late Comers. You count on it, every time our coach was leaving from any stop, they were always the last to get on the coach. We were always waiting for them!!

Best Ship Moment - sitting in the hot tub in the freezing cold air outside while it was raining, watching the glaciers and snow-capped mountains go past and feeling totally warm and cosy in the water.

Best Land Moment - We have to say that any time spent with Ken and Sue on land were our best moments. They are such a great couple, and we had loads of hysterics, laughs and good times.

Best Experience Overall - The ENTIRE holiday!! Look out Princess - all your cruises have our names on them!!!

We learnt so much while we were in Alaska so we're going to share some of those facts with you. If you've read all our blogs you may have seen some of them, but read them all anyway cos they're all very interesting.

• Alaska possesses an area of 586 000 square miles.
• Alaska is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined.
• Alaska is the northern-most state (extending past the Arctic Circle), the western-most state (continuing west beyond the Hawaiian Islands), and eastern-most state because the Aleutian Islands that form part of Alaska stretch westward beyond the 180th meridian, placing Alaska in the Eastern Hemisphere.
• Alaska is made up of many eco-systems including desert sand dunes, rain forests and dry tundra regions.
• Alaska has:-
  • 19 mountains reaching over 14 000 feet
  • 3 000 rivers
  • 1 800 islands
  • 3 000 000 lakes
  • nearly 100 000 glaciers which cover 29 000 square miles
  • 15 National Parks, Preserves and Monuments, plus 117 State Parks
  • 322 million acres of public lands.
• Alaska is bordered by 2 oceans (Pacific and Arctic) and 3 seas (Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort) that provide a total of 47 300 miles of shoreline, exceeding the total shoreline for the rest of the States.
• Alaska was originally owned by Russia, but was bought by the USA in 1867 for $7.2million, which works out to about 2 cents an acre.
• Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959 (exactly 42 years to the day before we got engaged...quite fitting!)
• There is no highway that extends across the state from east to west.
• Cities such as Barrow (the northern-most city in the USA), Kodiak in the south-western islands, and Sitka, Ketchikan and Juneua (the capital) can only be reached by air or sea.
• There is only one road from north to south. This road was built in 1974 to support the construction of the Alaska Pipeline from Valdez (South) to Prudhoe Bay (North).
• The Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered in 1968 and was estimated to contain approx. 12 billion barrels of oil.
• The Alaska Pipeline was built in 1977 and moves oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez (an ice-free port) 800 miles south.
• The pipeline has a capacity to move 2 million barrels of oil a day.
• Alaska is also abundant in coal - it has 2.5 times more coal than the rest of the US combined.

Learnt something new?? We definitely did.

Finally, thanks to everyone for following our activities and enjoying our experiences with us. Your messages were thoroughly enjoyed so far from home. See you next time!