Welcome to February, everyone! We've emerged on the other side of what turned out to be an exceptionally frigid, snowy January. It was fantastic to finally see some sun this weekend! I even got Felicity and Julie outside - well, if the front porch counts - for a photo.
What will this month hold? Hopefully less cold and snow - both for the sake of all the drivers and all the schools that have already exceeded their snow day allotments. It sure has been beautiful to look at from the comfort of our cozy house, though!
The final week of snow on Star Stable also featured - you guessed it - another horse bazaar. The breeds on sale this time were the Criollo, the Jorvik Wild Horse, the Icelandic Horse, and the Dartmoor Pony.
Wow, we haven't seen a bazaar stable this full in a while!
The Jorvik Wild Horse is one of our favorites. <3 I'm especially fond of this one. Maybe someday, but for now we're content with Ravenspell, our magical Halloween horse based on this model.
We love the Icelandics too. We took home our favorite, Opalowl, back in December 2024, but all of them are so pretty!
As cute as these guys are and as many bazaars as they've appeared in, we still don't have one in our stable. Their lip-curling idle animation is just too much of a turn off for us.
This was the first time the Criollo had ever gone on sale, so my sisters and I found them the most exciting. Star Stable's version of the Criollo has been criticized as being sausage-like. And yeah, they are quite long in body. That's the only thing about them that isn't picture perfect: they have great gaits, gorgeous coat colors, and luxurious manes and tails, plus they don't do anything annoying while idling. It hadn't been long at all since Sandman finished his training, but I knew it was going to be tall order to talk my sisters out of buying one.
We had a whole week to think about it. In the meantime, our earliest equines got some serious riding time. Our little Zony Tigertin enjoys all the championships. Nothing seems to satisfy her more than beating much larger equines to the finish line, as happened below.
Waiting for the others...
...and after most of them had galloped in.
Tigertin also was Clara's mount when they did the teaser quest for the new area that is coming soon, Marchengast Castle.
Ooh, magical forcefield! I'm guessing the fact that Clara can see it now means it's weakening?
We've spent some time out in Valedale, making slow progress on the various paths. We quite like this magical horse who lives there, Birkhir.
Various horses have taken Clara on long, frosty treks out in the Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur lately too. We've been giving it - and Mario with his observatory - lots of attention lately in hopes of unlocking archeology, which was my goal for this past year.
Many people have required rides out to Nic Stoneground's camp, including creepy "chef" Igor.
Like so many others, this scientist seemed totally unprepared for this climate
One of the recent things to unlock was a fun race around the frozen valley itself. Two thumbs up, though we feel sorry for the smart dog that oversees it, Swedenborg: he's always parked out on the cold ice by himself.
We're making slow progress towards repairing Nic's hot air balloon. It will be so much more convenient once we can quick-travel there rather than having to journey to Valedale, up a mountain, through a pass, down a the rickety elevator, and then along a twisty trail.
one of the more entertaining repair activities: filling tanks with geyser gas
We've also been working to restore zombie-like Franke, Elsa Einstein's brother, to his pre-multi-lightning-strike state... by harnessing the power of lighting strikes into a battery pack of sorts. I'm confused as to how lightning strikes would even happen in so cold a region, but I guess it's a magical place.
All too quickly, time was up for making our decision on the Criollo. As I had anticipated, I was unsuccessful in reining in my Criollo-loving sisters: the question quickly changed from "do we get one now or wait?" to "which one are we getting?"
The two front runners:
dark bay overo
bay manchado
It wasn't easy, but we eventually all agreed on the bay manchado. The names we were considering fit her better, plus she looks really cool from the back.
Meet our beautiful 25th equine, Cherrypeak!
I'm a little sad Felicity opted to have the snow turned off for these first screenshots, as it was the virtual snow's final day. It was late in the day and pretty dark with the snow, though, which is why she got away with toggling it off. XD
We opted to buy her out in the Medieval Camp rather than at the bazaar itself, since we were out there anyway for the daily jousting/archery/championship reward.
This tack had been picked out for Riverrock, who we'd been riding earlier in the day.
She looks great in yellow too, though.
the first sparkle!
We may have started her off gently (Moorland training races, then chill time in the stable), but she got thrown into the deep end this weekend!
Her first championship happened to be the daunting Valedale one. I think we've had more issues with it than any other. Fortunately, she was only up against two other horse-rider pairs: a striking grullo Criollo and a Runerunner.
Cherry made it through the course like a champ and won a silver ribbon. <3
Then she got to gallop around the mountainous parts of Valedale, first for Mario's observatory race and then in pursuit of some will-o-whips.
taking a breather to admire the view
after a will-o-wisp
If all that wasn't enough excitement, she then got to ride the rickety elevator, witness the lightning strikes in Dino Valley, and transport the super-charged, super dangerous battery pack back to camp.
Fortunately, it never exploded, not even when they had to jump a large crack in the ice.
Frank getting zapped by the "reverse lightning"
It worked!
And, as it turns out, Frank Einstein is an archaeology buff. He gave Clara "Old Betsy" the pickaxe, finally unlocking archeology for us! There will probably be more to come on that later, once we've had more time to find fossils and get a better feel for how it all works.
Wow, what an action-packed intro to Jorvik our Cherry has had! Until next time!
