The students in Miss Mickle's third-grade class enjoy a boat trip on the Connecticut River after a class discussion of ancestors reveals that Sidney and Ida both have connections to the sea.

Peter, twenty-seven and unemployed, embarks on this journey to avoid his family, while Evelyn, a fifty-year-old biology professor, comes in search of a more visceral life. Ruth and Lloyd, veteran white-water rafters in their seventies, know they will never make this trip again. Jill, a stay-at-home mother with her husband and two boys in tow, craves the luxury of relinquishing control and following someone else's rules. Mitchell and his wife, Lena,...

A New York Harbor tugboat captain and his family take the tug up the Hudson River to pick up and tow the barge carrying the enormous Christmas tree that will be displayed at Rockefeller Center.