With such a short season to grow the wildflowers are exploding everywhere! Our manager, Greg, is a wildlife photographer and keeps me updated on everything 'new' he discovers.

This was a very special find; lady-slippers (orchids) right next to the hotel!

But the biggest news this week is about Merlin. It turned out the poor baby has diabetes!

The vet took a little blood sample and his blood sugar was a whopping 374! Normally a cat is in the 80-120 range...

Fortunately they take high blood sugars a lot better than us or even dogs but it certainly had to come down somehow.

First we had to change his diet to a low carb(ohydrates) one, easier said than done when you're nowhere near a pet store so we ordered a special food (Evo) from the feed store in Fairbanks and cooked up some chicken (his favorite of all foods) to give him in the meantime.

The food arrived the next day (wow!) and after he had been on it for 4 days we took our first at-home blood sample (from the edge of  his ear, ouch....) with the gluco-meter we had ordered in the meantime from Walmart.

It had gone down to 192! That is awesome! Maybe, just maybe, he will be in the 30-50% group of cats that can be regulated, and actually reverted to normal, with a diet alone!

We'll give it another week. If he goes down to somewhere around 150 he probably won't need any insulin and his blood sugar (hopefully) will come down further over time as his pancreas continuous to heal.

If not, we'll pick up some insulin at Walmart next week when we go shopping and will have to start giving him very small doses twice a day just to help his pancreas along a little bit.

Merlin, our traveling cat

Always something with that cat! He's our special child!

He'd lost weight steadily (2 pounds) in the last couple of weeks but when I weighed him this morning he was the same as last week, so that's good news.

All in all, we're very happy and relieved. That sounds weird but at least we're not going to loose him anytime soon as would probably have been the case if he'd had kidney failure.

After all that we thought it was time for something fun so we visited the dogsled kennel of Denali Park!

Denali is the only national park in America with a working sled dog kennel.

During the winter the dogs help to patrol the inner two-million acres of designated wilderness where mechanized vehicles are prohibited. 

The dogs make it possible to contact winter visitors, haul supplies, transport wildlife researchers, and help insure that there are not illegal activities happening within the park, such as poaching or snow machines entering into the wilderness area.

There are approximately 30 dogs which is the number that works best for the winter patrol needs.  It allows them to take three sleds out on patrol if necessary. The number of dogs varies slightly from year to year depending on how many dogs retire in a particular year and how many puppies are born in the one litter they breed each year.

This year they had 3 puppies. Since today was a real warm day they were all conked out and didn't move a muscle.

The dogs are not a particular breed nor are they crosses of purebred dogs.  

They are called Alaskan huskies or just simply sled dogs. They are the product of hundreds of years of breeding dogs that are great at what they do--running and pulling sleds, and dogs that have adapted to cold weather. The Alaskan husky is a dog that has a strong desire to run and pull, has a thick two-layer coat of fur, a bushy tail, long legs, and great demeanor. Since they are not breeding for any particular look, but rather for performance the dogs have a wide variety in their appearance.

After roaming the kennels for a while and a little talk by the ranger we got a little demonstration of how much they like to run as the ranger drove a team around a track!

The whole kennel erupted in howls and barks when only 5 of them were chosen to run today!

.....'Pick me, pick me'!!!!......

The ranger explained they're so strong they have to lift them a little from the ground in the front, to take them from 4-'wheel' to 2-'wheel' drive, in order to not be pulled over!
 

 

And off they went!!

After the show you could have your picture taken. Too bad the dogs were all dead :)!

                                                                                     

It was a lot of fun. I could totally see myself have a 'team' if I would live here!

We're working a little too off course.

So far we're very happy with the work load, we can practically pick and choose what (and when) we want to do, on top of the hours we're working for the site. 

Driving the van is the most fun to do, you meet people from all over the world, have interesting conversations and get tips on top of that!

James had to dig some ditches since part of the employee yard was under water after a couple of days of heavy rain. I forgot to take pictures when he was wallowing in the mud but this is how it looked like after it dried up.

 

He also installed several fly screens in the lobby and living quarters of the staff.

And some little paint jobs here and there.....

I'm helping with the hotels laundry when they have a lot of check-outs....

And here are the newest residents of the hotel grounds:

Aaaawwww........, soooo cute!

Momma led them straight in between 2 of the hotel buildings. All guests were snapping away with their cameras but she seemed pretty much undisturbed. Just passing through!