Moose Droppings

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

Talkeetna is normally known as the jumping off point for climbers to Denali (they register at the ranger station in town, and then take planes to the glacier at the climbers base at 7,000')

However, today Talkeetna's place in Alaska lore wasn't related to Denali at all. Instead, it was related to moose poop. Welcome to the 36th annual Moose Dropping Festival! No, they don't drop moose, but they do drop moose droppings, and whoever has the closest one to the target wins $1,500. Don't worry, Beth and I both bought our own moose droppings, but we had to leave before the actual drop, so we don't know if we won. Only 3,000 droppings were sold, so we have a fairly decent chance (they actually award the top 11 closest ones, and the farthest one). The tee shirt I bought shows a plane dropping the moose poop onto a large target, so in our mind, that's how the moose dropping works. In actually, it may be more mundane than that (something about a cable between trees, and a bag of poop). We like our way better, and since we weren't there to see it, we're sticking to the plane story.

When you buy your moose dropping, they give you shelacked (sp?) and painted replica of the one that's being dropped, mounted on a pin. So people walk around all day with moose poop pinned onto their shirts, with numbers written on it. Moose poop is surprisingly small - only about the size of an acorn, so some people even managed to fit 4 or 5 droppings on their shirts. Yes, Beth and I are both bringing our moose droppings home for everyone to see.

Visitors flocked into town this morning to see this festival, definitely Talkeetna's busiest weekend of the year. There were traffic jams, and crowds milling around the 2 main streets and town square. Artisans, food vendors, and the requisite cruise ship shops set up tents and hawked their goods (Princess Cruises has a lodge nearby and shuttles their guests to Talkeetna - the cruise ship companies love anything to do with tourism in Alaska!). At noon, a parade came marching through town, full of mule-drawn carriages, ATV-drawn trailers, and kids on bikes tossing candy to the crowd. Small town Americana at its best.

We were sad that we were missing the Alaska Mountain Mama contest, which would take place tomorrow.