“On The Rocks”

This is my favorite place on earth — This beautiful cliff sits astride the Colorado / Wyoming border south of Laramie. The picture was taken from Colorado, and you can see into Wyoming off to the left. That Big Rock across the valley is Chimney Rock, also known as Camel Rock — do you see the camel, facing north (to the left)? My grandfather, Bill Wurl, was likely the first person to climb Chimney Rock. As a teenager, he painstakingly chiselled holes in the hard sandstone and installed spikes to climb on. After almost 90 years, the spike holes are still there, but they’re only an inch or two deep. Unfortunately for his climb, and perhaps fortunately for him, (as he in the mid-60’s told the “old ranch tour” that leaves Laramie each year) at the point when he reached the neck of the camel, some neighbors saw him up there, and told his mother. “And that,” he said, “was that!”

My grandparents homesteaded the ranch just a half mile up the road in 1932 after having their 4500 acres just South of here in Colorado foreclosed by family members during the great depression. Land in this general vicinity has been in my mother's family since 1880, when my great-grandparents came here from Sweden and my great-great grandparents came from Prussia. The Polish contingency didn’t arrive until the mid-1900’s, when my Dad, a special agent in the FBI, married my Mom, who grew up two miles to the south in Colorado. A Colorado picture to grace your wall. Enjoy Colorado photography at its best!

Near Laramie, Wyoming