This Alaska cruise was the perfect venue for a family reunion

Restless, I wheeled up to the coffee shop and bar on the 10th deck at the bow of the Westerdam. Through massive, slanted windows, a dense midmorning fog obscured everything as if the ship were crawling in the center of a heavy, low cloud.

All around me, people filled the comfy armchairs, reading, chatting, sipping beverages.

Then, the fog cleared and, ahead, smooth, unbroken sea. Until ... there, 100 feet off the bow, was the unmistakable long back of a whale, the first I’d seen after days at sea. As it slowly dipped beneath the surface, its distinctive tail rose from the water as if to wave goodbye.

It was not my intent to take a second cruise so soon after my first, a journey last year to Norway and the Arctic. But the idea was spawned by my wife Heidi’s many cousins as an easy way to convene a condensed family reunion now that most of their parents — including five Slen siblings from Madison, Minn. — were gone. Heidi’s 101-year-old father is the only Slen kid remaining, and he stayed home in Fargo.

Thirteen of us from across the country — cousins and spouses — gathered aboard Holland America’s Westerdam for a weeklong cruise from Seattle to southeast Alaska and back.

It proved a perfect vehicle to get to know each other even better. Our gatherings were small enough for deep conversations over dinner, yet big enough for group activities ranging from trivia games to comedy shows to dance performances.

And the trip was breathtaking enough — from hypnotic open seas to a coastline comprising majestic peaks of granite and pine — to plant seeds for returning.

We’d been at sea for a couple of days when our ship docked at Juneau, Alaska’s compact capital. It was here that Heidi and I took our only guided shore excursion, and the only wheelchair-accessible one not yet sold out: a tour of an old gold mine.

After a small van with a wheelchair lift took us back to the harbor area, Heidi and I intended to look around before our 5:30 dinner reservations on board. Then, on the boardwalk, a woman stopped us.

“Did you know your tire is flat?” she asked.

Sure enough, my wheelchair’s left rear tire was deflated. The culprit: a nail, its head sticking out of the tread. Heidi headed back to the ship to fetch our small air pump while I waited.

I called out to a passing pedal-cab driver to ask if there was a bike shop nearby. There was, said Rob from Alaska Pedicab, and he gave me the number. But there was no answer.

“I saw you and I told myself, if you were still here when I circled back, I’d see if you needed help,” he said.

I did. Mounts said he used to work at the bike shop. Now, he’s a harbor technician with Docks & Harbors for the City and Borough of Juneau. Helping is their job.

He called another nearby shop and within minutes arranged for a worker to pick up my chair and take it to the shop for repairs. Heidi accompanied the repair tech. Mounts stayed with me. Less than an hour later, my chair was back with the tire good as new. We were saved from pushing a manual chair for the rest of the week.

We’d even be on time for dinner.

“You’re a great ambassador for Juneau,” I told Mounts.

Since this was only our second cruise, comparisons to our first were inevitable.

At 936 feet, the Westerdam is twice as long as Hurtigruten’s M.S. Trollfjord, which we took along the Norwegian coast last year. It carries about three times as many passengers (around 2,000). It had more elevators and more accessible bathrooms.

And it had many more onboard amenities and activities: More restaurants, more bars, a bigger fitness room and a larger auditorium with nightly entertainment: dances, comedy shows and concerts. The Westerdam had two swimming pools, compared with none on the Trollfjord. Even a casino.

Alaska’s coastline even resembles Norway’s.

We preferred the Trollfjord and its more modest size. It was more intimate, allowing us to get to know more of the crew and our fellow passengers. And the food (locally produced in the regions of Norway we visited) was better on the Trollfjord.

Especially for a guy in a wheelchair.

With so much to do aboard the ship, it could have been easy to forget we were there to see Alaska. But a day after we left Juneau, Alaska insisted that we look.

As the ship’s engines slowed, camera-wielding passengers crowded the railings of the aft deck to gawk at the ethereal blue-white river of ice that was the Dawes Glacier.

Can more than 100 people fall silent in unison? It sure seemed that way as ice fell into eerie green sea. Not a peep. Just reverence.

The next day, we disembarked in Sitka, once the seat of the Russian government before Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867. A shuttle took us into this compact and historic town, where we stepped inside St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, and later visited Totem Square and the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi Tribal Community House.