Springs and the Calligraphy Highway interlude: the Taj Mahal

Our tent is the Taj Mahal. (We probably look more like vintage comedy than these guys do, while putting it up. The cats stayed home.) I can stand upright in it, and we can fit a queen size air bed. The thing has a garage (not shown in the video). Next time, I'm planning to take along the gorgeous flag bunting our oldest girl made for our wedding and drape it festively about for a proper castle effect. I'm sure the hipsters in their roof-boxed Civic hatchbacks laugh in scorn ... frankly I'm too old and chronically sleep deprived to care. Give me the comfy, thank you very much.

We divided and conquered, with Simon putting up the tent and getting it ready to sleep in, while I tended the fire, grilled the steak, baked spuds in the ashes, and set the table (and, mind you I'm not confirming this, possibly sampled the beer). Also smoked my clothes and hair, as you do.

I've tried quite a few kinds of cooking, but this is actually the first time I've cooked steak on an open fire. It was terrific, I have to say. Steak's pretty hard to mess up. And yes, we did have veges as well.

We enjoyed the sunset as we ate. Then, tidied up, sat round in our comfy camp chairs, getting up to put more wood on the fire and more layers of clothes and blankets on ourselves as it got darker and colder. It was a toss-up whether we could stay awake for the sky to get all the way dark - this doesn't happen until nearly 10 at this time of year, and it had been a two-blog-posts-worth day. We managed it though, just barely. Long enough to admire Jupiter, Mars and Saturn delineating the ecliptic, and such a lavish plenty of stars (it was clear.)

I decided to make up my own constellations, but now I am decidedly disappointed to discover that my favourite one already exists. I was starting to think of constellations as making approximately as much sense as sun signs, but now I see I was wrong. It's a tiara, though, not a crown, clearly.

From http://www.topastronomer.com/StarCharts/Constellations/Corona-Borealis.php

Who doesn't love a tiara, right?

Right.

Itinerary

Well, not really, because it was all in the same place. Here