Alaska

the answer is because the Earth spins on an axis of 23.5 degrees. This means from March through September, with the pinnacle being in june, the equator of the sun shines more predominantely on the northern hemisphere causing more daylight in USA and alaska. The opposite is true from September through March, when the equator of the sun shines more directly on the southern hemisphere. This is why it gets nightime around 8:30PM in the summer, but 5:30PM in the winter in the USA. In more northern regions such as alaska, nightime may be daylight all the way through. It has everything to do with the earth’s rotation axis and the equator’s sun. This also means, that while you were in alaska basking in complete light at night, there was some poor penquin in antartica basking in complete darkness during the day.

Ty’s answer about being close to the sun is incorrect. Infact, June is when the earth is further away from the sun. It has everything to do with earth’s tilt and nothing to do with distance from the sun.

Look at figure 1. In that example the southern hemisphere would have more light than us in the northern hemisphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season