Coincidence? I don't think so.

Once upon a time, I snagged a bunch of old photos from my grandmother's house and made copies of them. Some I snagged because they're my ancestors, and some just because they looked cool. For instance, here's one of the few photos of my great grandparents (that's my mother's father at the bottom of the group):
These photos were relegated to the infrequently visited purgatory of our dining room at the house in Kentucky, and I never put a whole lot of thought into the identities of the people in the "cool" photos.

A few weeks ago I was looking at the photos (which now hang in the upstairs hall in our new house, right where they're convenient to view while waiting for Someone to finish washing her hands), and I realized that this group wedding portrait (which I copied purely because I liked the photo) is probably from my great grandparents' wedding, which means that the lady with the bouquet the size of a bush is my great grandmother.

And upon closer inspection, I realized that this photo, which I copied because it's hella-cool, is probably also of my great grandmother.

I've had this photo on my desk for several years, as sort of an inspirational "if she can ride sidesaddle in a donkey all the way across the country to see this rock, whatever is annoying you can't really be so hard" knick-knack. And I've always wished that I knew where that rock was so I could go and get my photo taken there, probably 100 years after she did.

Fast forward to this weekend, when the Colorado vacation guide arrived in the mail. Jason and I have been trying to figure out where we want to go on vacation this summer, and he had ordered the guide just to see what's out there. We both sort of flipped through the magazine, dogeared a couple of pages, and went back to eating lunch. I flipped it open at random yesterday, and this is what I saw:

I found the rock!

Summer Mission: Get a photo of me and the great great granddaughter in front of Balanced Rock in the Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs (donkey optional). Guess that settles the vacation question for the year, doesn't it?