No Vacation from the Stripes and Spots

Mom went on a vacation with her extended family last week! They all stayed at a lakeside rental house in rural western Michigan. This year it seemed extra special, since it was the first time Mom's gone on vacation and the first time she's seen her California aunt and uncle in person since 2019. (We were left home alone as usual, but we found out all about it afterwards from Mom's journal and photos on her phone.) 

Predictably, since they had access to a pool (and a very seaweedy lake), the weather pattern turned unseasonably cool and intermittently wet for their entire stay. On only 2 of the 6 mornings did they wake up to sun instead of clouds, but fortunately none of the days were total wash outs. 

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are some photos of a few highlights:

Mom's room for the week - comfy but not easy on the eyes. 

The wallpaper was stripes on the bottom and white with black dots on top, and if that wasn't enough, the room was decorated with bright pink bedspreads and accents. XD 

That's Mom's reindeer on the nightstand, who stows away on every trip she goes on. Lucky reindeer.

Visit to South Haven: much more pleasant than their New Year's Day visit.

The downtown Allegan greeting committee. Good thing Nala wasn't there.

The Kalamazoo River looking very tranquil.

Part of a cool (but sadly damaged) mural on a building, presumably depicting the logging history of the area.

Bonus of visiting Lake Michigan on a cool, cloudy day: no crowds

Monarch butterfly enjoying the beach

Oval Beach piers

Mom made it this far out on the boulder section before deciding it wouldn't be wise to continue (there was a big gap between slanted boulders, and she is not the most coordinated person...)

Crashing waves made some of the boulders slippery also, but a few family members made it all the way out and back, and nobody got hurt.

They explored the channel the other way too. Their side was bordered by a picturesque sand duney nature preserve. (Big, fancy houses are going up on the other side.)

The scenic end of the channel

Even on an overcast day, the views did not disappoint

Not sure what exactly the dark particles consist of (seaweed?) but the waves carry them into some really cool patterns. 

A friendly duck. (They also saw tons of seagulls and a few sandpipers.)

This 1000-piece puzzle was started several days into the week. Despite their efforts, it was not completed before they had to leave. So. Much. Fern. It got put back in the box in chunks. Maybe they'll haul it out and finish it next year?

The ends of vacations are always a let down, but at least Mom could look forward to meeting Eleanor and Kite's zorse foal #3 when she got back. (She was born shortly after Mom left.) Here she is as a newborn:

And here she is by the time Mom got back! Wow, they grow quickly!

She's our biggest, highest genetic stat zorse yet! Her spots are less abundant than her sister's, and she's the first not to inherit Eleanor's blue eyes. 

Lily isn't happy about it, but Kite and Eleanor are having one last foal. Bethany, Julie, and I decided each of us ought to have one. Lily acted like she doesn't really want one, blah blah blah, but once it comes, I bet she'll change her mind. =) We've parted with Squiggy (the huge pearl) and Practical Cat (the ornery cremello with major bend-or spots), so it's not like there isn't room.

Finally, here are 3 fun wilds we've encountered recently.

Okay, so he wasn't actually standing this close to a tiger when we caught him, but we found one in the vicinity and just had to pose him with it for this screenshot.

I love that this name randomly came up on a zebra. XD

The final wild is the first we're (okay, mostly I'm) seriously considering keeping this month. Look at those spots!

He's also big, sturdy, and has a pretty good genetic stat total.

He's not that great at anything in particular, other than being a follower, but he's not glaringly weak in any particular area either. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the second half of July stays as slow as the first half wild-wise, because I think this guy would make a great addition to our herd.

A pearl, a seal, and a narwhal... and we're not even in our kayak

Since our last post, we've celebrated Julie's birthday and the 4th of July. The rain finally stopped, and we've been enjoying more traditional Michigan summer weather: hot and sunny.

In contrast, our wanderings out from our ranch this past week brought us to some quite chilly biomes. While tromping slowly through deep snow, we found our biggest, heaviest wild ever, Squiggy.

He's 22 hands tall and just shy of 2500 lbs! He has 3 inches on our previous record holder. The max height for a horse on HI3 is 22.2 hands, 2 inches taller even than Squiggy. That would be one enormous horse!

The downsides of all that bulk: he doesn't move or respond very quickly and has poor stamina. His personality is also far from ideal: skittish and just ornery enough to buck. (And it's a long way down...)

My sisters want to keep him anyway (shocker), impressed by his shiny pearliness as well as his massiveness. I'm still trying to talk them out of it.

Granted, we moved the camera downward a bit for these last two screenshots to make it look more how it would for somebody standing on the ground observing (rather than the default higher-up view), but doesn't Pepsi look tiny? XD

Our second noteworthy horse was this suspiciously large seal brown mare hanging out on the ice crusts. (Most ice biome wilds are small ponies.)

Sure enough!

She's a seal brown Heavy Waler! (And very lost, ha ha.) She doesn't look particularly heavy to me, not after Erglu, but I assume she's built more heavily than other types of Walers - we still need to check in the library. At any rate, we are super pleased to have an Australian breed represented in our herd now, especially a mare as lovely as this one. 

Yay, her performance metrics are great! Quite a nice personality too, aside from her antisocial-ness. 

I don't think I'd ever have pegged her as a lucky find if I'd found her in a biome with horse-sized wilds. She's very well-proportioned, but there's nothing super eye-catching about her conformation that screams "I'm a purebred!" to me the way some do. XD

We caught our third noteworthy horse in a black sands biome on Julie's birthday. It's pretty obvious why we've included her...

And no, that's not appaloosa spotting. They're bend-or spots! 

Despite her nothing-special performance metrics and underwhelming personality, my sisters want to keep her too. *Sighs* I'm trying to talk them out of it, but what made even more of an impact is when "Practical Cat" randomly bucked off Pepsi from a standstill the other day, illustrating that yes, she definitely is ornery enough to buck.

She's built lightly - it's hard to guess from these screenshots that she is 17 hands tall. Bend-or on cremello is not my favorite look. Sort of reminds me of a spotted seal or narwhal.

Even though he was lazy and kind of a sausage, I think I preferred our other pale, extensively bend-or-spotted wild from a while back, Medley.

*Sighs* I think we should keep waiting. We're bound to find a bend-or spotted horse with a pleasant personality eventually.

Of the few wilds we've found so far in July, none have been standouts. However, there is more news on the zorse front. Eleanor and Kite's colt continues to grow like a weed. Here he is as a yearling:

The pair's second foal was born on July 3, a pinto filly! No silver this time, though.

Her brother's going to be taller, but wow, she has way higher genetic stats!

Her personality is more desirable too!

While her body stripes seem even fainter than her brother's, she seems to have more distinct striping on her face than he does. We'll see if that remains true as she gets older.

Foal #3 is now on its way. We're still curious to see if we get more defined stripes, a longer mane, or overo, but hopefully this will be it. We read up on pearl and learned we're not ever going to get a dilute foal from this pairing, since pearl requires pearl from both parents to express if there's no cream involved. (Zebras don't carry pearl, and neither parent has cream.) Too bad Kite didn't fall for a cremello or perlino. XD

Despite the lack of stark contrast between stripes and base coat, I'd be astonished if, by the time the trio grows up, my sisters haven't gotten attached to them all... unless #3 is ornery, solid black, or smaller than Kite. We'll see!