The Sniff Test

May 16-June 1, 2025 | Michigan and Canada

This was our longest trip so far. We intended to be gone for three weeks; however, early into the trip, Marsha’s mom fell again, twice, While we did our best to support her long distance, it meant she would not be able to travel to Indiana as planned where we would meet up to spend time with family. Our gut instinct was to rush back home right away, but mother insisted we continue our trip. Since she’s 94 and has her wits about her despite the falls, we listen to what she says, mostly. Nevertheless, we decided not to do the Indiana and Mammoth Cave portions of the trip, and headed back to Sebring on May 29 and arrived at our RV lot back home on June 1.

This trip taught us a few key lessons about RV life and also opened us to new relationships. Both our Michigan and Canada friends have new people in their lives they introduced us to, and we did a little sniff test for them to give our thumbs up to their choice of significant others. We are very happy for both of them and look forward to hearing how their relationships evolve.

Sophia and Olivia also did a lot of sniff tests, which largely did not go well.
They are terrible house guests and sleep mates when they are out of their
well-defined environment. They haven’t been in many other people’s homes or around other pets, particularly three cats and another dog at the same time. This led us to board them while we were in Michigan and Canada so the households could function better and we could get some sleep.

Both of us rely a lot on gut feelings and do a lot of gut checks about things. Along this journey, we came to a few conclusions that more seasoned, fulltime RVers probably already know.

• It doesn’t matter how long between meetings, true friendships endure.
• Limit each day of travel to no more than 320 miles.
• Limit the number of consecutive days on the road to three.
• Stay at least three nights at each destination.
• Even if friends insist otherwise, stay in the RV to sleep so the dogs are in their happy space.
• Use Love’s RV Stops for single night stays on the road.
• Avoid exit 451 on 1-75 in Florida. It’s NOT RV friendly.

Research being done at the University of California Irvine suggests that our sense of smell helps to form memories and improve memory function even into our later years. Perhaps the memories we’ve formed on this latest adventure will be lasting because we took the time to do a few sniff tests.

*Thanks to our dear friend for this campsite flag. It’s quite fitting for this blog post.