Whitewater Rafting in Colorado [VIDEO]

While on our two-week national park puddle jumping trip through Utah and Colorado, my buddy Michael Butler and I took a day to do some amazing whitewater rafting on the Cache La Poudre River with Mountain Whitewater Descents.

The trip included a handful of Class Four rapids, a half dozen Class Three rapids and consistent Class Two water. I had done a trip on the Delaware River that I enjoyed, but this was even more thrilling.

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Utah and Colorado back country hiking road trip

With my good buddy Mike Butler, I just came back from two weeks road tripping and hiking Utah and Colorado and what a trip it was.

Overall, we spent $3,021.85 on the two week trip. That means each of us spent at least $1,510.93 driving some 2,100 miles and visiting six national parks, crashing in four hotels, two campgrounds and lots of tent spots.

Below, find a quick run down with hopes of going into greater detail later.

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Hitchhiking in South Dakota: Story Shuffle 7 audio is now live

For Story Shuffle 7, held in a fine rowhome in the Newbold section of South Philadelphia inside a beautiful and eventually stormy night, I told the story of my first hitchhiking experience in South Dakota.

My lesson: trusting in strangers is a great risk that often comes with great reward.

Check out all the stories here. Listen to mine here or by using the player below.

LISTEN HERE

Couchsurfing in St. Louis

Due in Columbia at the University of Missouri for an invite-only journalism roundtable starting Sunday evening, I took the opportunity to fly into St. Louis a day early to explore the Gateway to the West.

I’m sure glad I did.

I arrived Saturday afternoon and was met by my couchsurfing host Alan (read about couchsurfing and my first experience with it a few years ago here). That started a night and a Sunday morning exploring what was the country’s fourth largest city a century ago. Facebook photos here.

Let me share a quick itinerary of the cool things I got to do and see:

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Alaska (backpacking through the Last Frontier)

In 2005, when I came home from a summer studying in Ghana, I was on the phone with my grandmother, and she said “Now all you need to see is Alaska.”

For my grandmother, who died in 2009 as the last of my grandparents, Alaska was truly the last frontier. I found it so interesting that she was so enamored with this distant, oil-producing extension of the United States, of which it accounts for a fifth of its size.

Then you should go see it, I told her. Maybe, she said, but I don’t think so, not now.

So I went.

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Lakota Reflections from the Rosebud Reservation


By Christopher Wink | May 25, 2006 | Travel Reflection

I have proudly represented Temple University on service immersion trips before. I have had South Dakotan ground beneath my feet before, too. Moreover, I have been with Jason Riley in a rental car and with John Dimino on an airplane before. Still, it is easy to understand that some experiences, no matter the similarities, can never be fully replicated.

Our group of ten administrators and students flew into Rapid City, South Dakota in May 2006, destined to work on the Rosebud Reservation of the Lakota Nation. While nearing the airport from above, below me South Dakota appeared wrinkled and aged. As we further approached, her features took form: trees that survived passed generations of agricultural clearing and beef cattle that survived passed days of agricultural slaughter.

This region of Dakota’s limitless expansion is only interrupted by flurries of elevation change. Once on ground, the pavement of interstate 90 appeared to have tamed the land into a consumable table of gentle slopes and caressing ridges. All of which leads me to offer muddled explanations of the region’s geographical features: endless plains with small, yet punctuated elevation changes interjected regularly.

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Habitat for Humanity in Laredo, Texas Reflections

By Christopher Wink | March 18, 2006

Temple University sent 23 of us to Laredo, Texas to work with Habitat for Humanity. We slept on the ground of vacant classrooms, took less-than-hot showers, and worked a watered-down form of construction from 8am until 4pm daily. For those unfamiliar with what the phrase college spring break generally connotes, this wasn’t your garden-variety week off from American higher education.

Yet, nearly 100 volunteered to pack screwdrivers and hammers in their spring break suitcases. It’s a shame that only 23 of those who applied got to work with the international group that manages to build beautiful homes with volunteer crews and sell them to deserving families with long-term, low interest loans. -The teach-a-man-to-fish type of charity that makes us get mushy inside.

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My Cross-Country Adventure Summer 2007

San Diego to Philly |  Thurs., Aug. 9 to Aug. 24, 2007 | Michael Butler and Matt Sheehan

There is something distinctly American about the cross-country trip, so, while I had my fair share of road trips — going as far as driving from the New Jersey coast to Idaho and returning — I had never driven across this fine country of ours, until summer 2007.

With two friends, I flew to San Diego, rented a vehicle, drove north along the California coast and then hopped from national parks and cities of interest all the way to the East Coast.

I hope to add more details and information in the future, but, for now, enjoy some photos of general interest from the trip below.

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Hurricane Katrina volunteering in New Orleans

I went to New Orleans with Common Ground to offer some post-Hurricane Katrina support. Mostly, I stayed with a hundred other volunteers on cots in a high school gymnasium and worked in small teams to salvage homes in the Ninth Ward.

I was driven to provide some service, having worked in a shelter in Philadelphia of victims.

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