The morning after the birthday bash, Anne and Ralph took us with them to check on their property that used to belong to Ralph's grandparents. It's located in the charming town of Newburgh, New York. We arrived to find the yard full of branches that had been downed by a storm. We spent the night in Newburgh in the upstairs apartment at "Grandma's House," before setting out on the next leg of our journey.

Our second "upstate" experience came two days later, when we drove up to Albany to have tea with Connie's friend Linda, a fellow writer from the 2008 Guideposts Writers Workshop. It was wonderful to see each other face-to-face after a year-and-a-half of communicating by e-mail only.