Today was not about Alpena, although it was a pleasant town with nice folks. Today was about family. My brother, Jan, drove up from his new home in Vanderbilt, Michigan to spend time with us. It's the first time we've been together in 7 years. Life has a way of getting in the way of things.

It was an interesting trip from the ship to shore on the tender. The docking point was up a little body of water that required a bridge to raise each time the tender came in or left. The tenders coordinated their approaches to and from the ship such that 2 could pass through on one opening. For such a small town a large traffic jam occurred each time the bridge opened.

Aside from a cute downtown and the world's largest cement plant, there wasn't much to see. Of note though, is that offshore of Alpena is the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which protects an estimated 116 historically significant shipwrecks.

Mae and I enjoyed walking around a bit before Jan arrived and we ended up at a really funky coffee shop. We sat there until Jan wanted to show us photos of his new house so we had to move inside because of the brightness of the clear blue sky. The 3 of us chatted for so long that we ended up having lunch there as well. I should have taken photos of the food; it was really surprisingly good.

Jan had to leave for home and we headed back to the ship.

Dinner was good as always. We've started doing one of the two specialty restaurants each night instead of the World Cafe which is nice, but it's a buffet. The last time we were in the Italian restaurant they told us we could order half portions which has turned out to be perfect for us.