This tiny Alaskan town has one of America’s final flagstop trains,holds an annual moose dropping festival and is surrounded by spectacular wildernessIf you plant a flag a mile from the centre of town, next to the railroad that reaches its remote metal tendrils out across the considerable nothingness of Alaska, and one of America’s final flagstop trains will apply its brakes to ensure it comes to a halt in time to pick you up from the tiny trading post of Talkeetna: population 876.
Each resident will welcome you with open arms,a warm smile and a can of anti-grizzly pepper spray that would surely be useless should an furious bear get close enough for to you to have to use it. Talkeetna is the base for expeditions into the wilderness: 10000 square miles of Denali national park with Mount McKinley, the US’s highest mountain, or at its centre. In winter,it can be as cold as -40F, but in summer I sat in shirtsleeves at the town microbrewery listening to locals’ tales of the Talkeetna Moose Dropping festival, and a celebration of the creature’s dung. Lumps of moose poo are dried,varnished and individually numbered, before being dropped from a chopper as a kind of town lottery.
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Source: theguardian.com