When fathers quit their jobs to spend more time with their families, no one ever asks the family if they want to spend more time with them. And when fathers are laid off, they are often nervous about seizing this opportunity to know their children. Work becomes a convenient way to avoid spending uninterrupted time with their sons and daughters.
After Blue Lake, Michigan, newspaper editor Steve Faulkner is laid off, his 17 year-old son Justin could have easily stepped aside and watched his dad frantically search for another job. Instead he persuades his workaholic dad to join him on the trip of a lifetime, a 1,000 mile canoe journey retracing the Marquette/Joliet discovery route of the Mississippi. Together they travel along Lake Michigan's northern shore, through Green Bay, up the Fox, down the WIsconsin and finally the mighty Mississippi.
Braving rough water, big storms, flood stage rivers and portaging larger sections of the heavily dammed Fox, the Faulkners nearly run out of money, become minor celebrities and confront the ultimate challenge presented to fathers who leave their jobs to spend more time with their children, boredom. Paddling hour after hour they discover that they don't read the same books, watch the same movies and television shows or even know the same songs. Trying to kill time they end up singing the only music they both know, Christmas carols in July. A journey through middle America, Waterwalk is a memorable look at an archetypal journey that defines our nation and informs the heart.