On October 8^th, we packed up the cooler, loaded up the Touareg and set off toward Woodstock, NY for a weekend getaway.

It has been about five months since I last hitched up Bambi. Once we arrived at the storage site, I unlocked the front door and stepped into the familiar surroundings. The low aluminum ceiling, curved walls, and stainless steel appliances. I felt at home again.

It was hard to believe that so much time had passed since I moved cross-country. We were on the road for 48 days last time. And when I shut down the trailer for storage, I left the fridge door open so it would air out. I started to close it but saw what looked like small bugs crawling on the bottom of the fridge. I screamed and Jay came running into the trailer. He took a closer look and reported they were mouse droppings, not bugs. “Oh no!!!!” was all I could muster up.

Then I opened the kitchen drawers and found a whole pile of droppings. I think a family of mice had taken up residence in the drawers. I won’t go into details about what was going through my head, but for someone who is deathly afraid of germs, I almost had a mental breakdown. My next reaction was to get rid of the droppings as fast as possible. I put on disposable latex gloves on myself and Jay. We started emptying everything in the drawers into plastic bags. I threw away an apron that the mice had chewed up, which I assume was part of a nest for a mouse family to soon live in. The mice had found a stash of hot sauce packets in the drawers and ate through them. Who knows what kind of damage those sauces did to the digestive system of those mice.

There was a flurry of activity as we emptied the drawers and looked for signs of the critters. After everything was secure, we went through the routine task of hitching up the trailer. We stopped at a RiteAid and I bought a bunch of disinfectant wipes to scrub the stuff that was in the drawers. I would deal with the cleaning later.

The only goal in mind was to get on the road. I had been craving this time away. I was beginning to feel at home and comfortable in NY. And after being in one place for months, I wanted a break from the comfortable, cozy life and feel a sense of adventure again.

Soon I was towing Bambi along the interstate, in search of autumn leaves and green grass. With Butters, Rosie, and Jay in the car… everything was complete in my world again.