Today though was the first day of the the Annual Moose Drop Festival with about 10,000 people from all over Alaska, and a few hundred travelers on these tours here by happenstance. They celebrate with a parade, breakfasts, sales of moose statue made for the parade, and the famous Moose Drop. Moose are constipated in the winter and when they poop they leave little pellets. The locals "harvest" them, dry them, paint them, and shellac them. Then 3,000 are sold at $5 each as a fund raiser for the local VFW branch. (In fact all the events help them.) The pellets are lifted up in a bag and released to fall on a target. The closest one get the owner $1600, and so forth for 11 places. The furthest out also gets a prize. Alas, we didn't win.
Oh well, we got to take a bush plane (a De Havilland DHC-3 Otter), a 12 seater, up to see Mt. McKinley up close.
We first flew past our lodge.
The local name for McKinley is Denali, meaning the Big One, in the native tongue. We couldn't see the summit from the ground as it was too cloudy from the south side so we flew around to the north side to get this beautiful view. Denali is over 19,000 feet high, the highest point in the Americas.
We then landed on Ruth Glacier at the 13,000 foot level. At this point we were standing on 3,500 feet of ice. What a view and experience. There is a little landing strip here with bush planes landing and taking off every few minutes. We were very lucky as only our group and the one before us were able to land there that day. Conditions are often unstable here and landings not suggested. The last picture is Mom with our pilot.
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