Where are you, wonderland wilds?

On HI3 yesterday, we had a productive afternoon of wild hunting: just shy of 30 wilds caught! The goal was to catch pretty, hopefully gaited wonderland wilds, but things did not go as planned.

When we first logged on and travelled to our ranch to feed and water everybody, we were distracted by multiple wilds. Our favorites were these two:

Aw, snowflake appaloosas are so cool!

Appropriately named. :) 

She was a tobiano... with just one tiny white patch near her withers on the other side.

After tradering the rainforest wilds, it was off to a club with "wonderland" in its description. We decided to take on a mail run, though, which took us away from wonderland into strangler fig forest. The cutest find: a tiny gray pony named "Colossal."

From there, we wandered through a tiny dark forest section (no donkeys or tiny wilds, just thick mist and some dead trees) and into plains.

We found a few more wilds hanging around out there, including these two:

Ooh, splash on sooty buckskin! She was my favorite of the day.

=)

We teleported back to the club and deliberately headed out into wonderland territory then, determined to find at least a few wonderland wilds. It was, sadly, only a few, even though we spent quite a while roaming around. None were gaited either. I think maybe they were on to us and mostly went off to hide.

Our favorite, no contest, was this cool appaloosa mare:

At the club where we sold the strangler fig and wonderland wilds, horsey sense went into overdrive. Two pairs of jungle ponies were hanging out nearby. My favorite was this little champagne cutie named Ernie:

Then it was off to a location we'd saved as "unexplored wonderland" in our locations list, but as I think we found out once before, it's not wonderland at all, but a vast bamboo forest. Oops. We've finally deleted that location now, ha ha. As long as we were there, we filled up our horse slots with abundant bamboo-terrain wilds. Our two favorites are below.

A mellow, solid liver chestnut with a tiny star

This stallion reminds me of Clorox, only in brown frame instead of palomino pintaloosa. XD 

Had he not been borderline ornery, we might have gotten attached.

This is probably going to be it for August wilds, since we have a busy few days ahead, so things are looking up for Magnus and Cheeky! Sometime soon we really need to get crafting saddle pads and polos for all these new herd members. We are way behind! Or maybe we'll give up on the "craft them all yourself" thing and start buying cool patterned ones from other players... We'll see.

I will leave you with a few fun shots of Mom's visit to the zoo yesterday: some real-life wild animals.

Magnus

My birthday (Aug 8) fell on a warm, cloudy, occasionally rainy Monday this year. As I've been typing this post 5 days later, more rain and some non-alarming little thunderstorms have been rolling through. I don't mind - we've needed the rain - but it's just funny, because when I think of early-mid August, I think dry and hot.

We lassoed many equines on HI3 on the Sunday before my birthday. I figured we wouldn't have much time on the day itself, so I was really hoping somebody would find a keeper as an early birthday present for me. 

Lucky me: we did! To make it even more special, he is our first keeper from the snowy mountains biome, which is known for having large, cold-blood type wilds!

The name is a flop, but I was immediately smitten by the horse himself. (I love drafties, indigo eyes, and lots of hair, so how could I not be?)

As huge as he is, I'm not surprised he isn't very fast, but he still turns pretty well. He's lazy, which is annoying but not nearly as bad as being ornery or a stubborn leader. At 18%, we will be able to coax him into better behavior eventually, so I was more than willing to overlook it. 

Yay, this guy was sooo worth the long trudge through deep snow to lasso! <3 Many thanks, Lily and Inky! I have renamed him Magnus, and I think he's relieved. XD

I did briefly visit HI3 on my birthday as well, and I was greeted by this:

=)

My first birthday wild was my favorite of the 4 savanna residents I lassoed.

He isn't fearless or flame-colored, but he sure is speedy for a wild!

Even though this guy would've been more practical to keep than Magnus (faster and not lazy), I just wasn't feeling it. Magnus is (in my opinion, anyway) so much easier on the eyes, and we have loads of savanna wilds already. So, Magnus stayed and Fearless Flame did not. 

We found yet another cool wild today chilling near another elephant on a savanna beach.

She's champagne and brindle, which is awesome. Her conformation... not so much. Swan-like neck, short head, hooves like spades...

...and lazy. Again. Still, she is pretty cute, and I think the auto-generated name actually fits her. 

Hmm, my favorite is still definitely Magnus, but we'll see if any of my sisters get attached. I think odds are good. 

Goodbye, July (and September)

We've reached the end of July already? It's scary how fast the summer months go, isn't it?

I think it's partly that vacations make time go faster, because while Mom and fam took theirs, my sisters and I took a vacation of our own: an extended campout in the backyard. 

We had a great time riding, working on jigsaw puzzles on a big chunk of cardboard, playing cards, catching fireflies, telling stories around the campfire, and playing out elaborate stories in the lawn with our toy horses and dogs. We also had time to pursue our respective less overlapping interests, such as working to train Silver (my dog) to pull a little cart (me), reading a thick book that I never would've chosen from the cover (Bethany), working on a story (Julie), and filling up a whole sketchbook with animal drawings (Lily).

Mom had a pretty great time on her family's vacation too. They stayed at the same place in the country they've been to many summers before. 

the view out the front

the little bedroom Mom shared with Grandma

the bathroom downstairs still has a cute duck border =)

They completed many jigsaw puzzles too.

the owl puzzle from last summer finally got finished!

they sorted the pieces by color on this one to make it easier

Mom brought this one =)

this one was too big to fit on the card table, so they had to get creative

why aren't fancy cookie tins a thing anymore?

Disappointingly, the pool was non-operational this year. Since it was smoking hot weather-wise much of the time, this prompted Mom and assorted family members to visit Lake Michigan much more often than in previous years. Fortunately, swimming conditions were good most of the week: green or yellow flags flying and water warm enough to linger in. 

On the evenings it wasn't raining, they headed back out to the lakeshore to watch the sunsets, and they did not disappoint.

Somebody had connections to get them access to this gorgeous pool for several hours on one afternoon too. Iridescent tiles, no-slip tile work around it, infinity edge, lake view, fancily landscaped waterslide... Wow! 

It was rough to return to regular life this past week, especially for Mom, as crazy hard as she had to work to get caught up at work. Still, there's nothing quite like one's own bed, complete with a whole bunch of stuffed animals waiting for you. =)

We were happy to get back to HI3 after two weekends in a row away. Probably because of those two weekends off, we're not going to be adding any new equines to the herd in the calendar month for once. There are two honorable mentions, though.

First up: this wide-barreled dunalino stallion.

He has a great genetic stat total for a wild, and he was surprisingly speedy for his build.

Even though he accelerated and turned like a bus, we probably would've kept him had it not been for his orneriness. :(

Of course, he didn't buck Pepsi off at all the two times she tried him out. He was annoyingly prone to frequent rearing up when placed, though, in addition to the ear-pinning and kicking, so no stocky dunalino for us.

The second honorable mention: a champagne mare who takes the term "spindly-legged" to a whole new level.

If you can tear your eyes off that, she's quite nice. Beautiful coloring, full mane and tail, ice blue eyes...

...and no huge strikes against her metrics or personality-wise. 

Unfortunately, we couldn't get past the micro-mini hooves.

Those were the only two standouts stat-wise this month, but I will leave you with a few others that made me smile.