I took a mini-vacation last weekend to play in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego. I kayaked, snorkeled, surfed, and swam. But the best part of the trip was eating at In-N-Out Burger. I even tried a few items from their (not so) secret menu.

Swimming in the ocean is pretty cool. Charmaine and Julie were in an ocean kayak paddling from La Jolla Shores to the caves around La Jolla Cove. I was swimming along behind them. The water was fairly clear. I could easily see the sand along the bottom when it was more than 15 feet deep. At one point we ran across an old anchor and some kids who said they saw a leopard shark. After further questioning, they admitted they hadn’t seen a shark since the day before. I think it would have been cool to see a shark, but I didn’t think there was much chance of it.

I did manage to step on a stingray, though. That freaked me out. I guess they are in the area this time of year. I jumped off my surfboard once and landed on something the wiggled and wiggled to get free. It turned out to be a small stingray. I was very glad not to have been hurt by it.

I’m not much of a surfer, but I really enjoy it. The waves were fairly small at Pacific Beach and at La Jolla Shores Beach, but there will still 20 to 30 surfers enjoying them. I have a hard time balancing on my board, but I think it may be because I’m renting such a big board, so it rides higher in the water. Maybe I just suck at balancing, I’m not sure. But I can pull myself onto the board and get up to speed to catch a wave as well as most of the surfers that were there when I was there. There weren’t many “good” waves, so I only ended up riding about 15 waves in 3 hours, but it was still better than working.

The snorkeling wasn’t all that impressive. I liked what I saw just outside Avalon on Catalina much better than the stuff around the kelp beds outside the La Jolla Caves.

I got to hit In-N-Out Burger twice in my 3 day trip. That was awesome. The first day I got a 3×3 Animal style with a chocolate shake. I think that’s the perfect combination, but I was willing to try for better the next time. When I ordered the 4×4 Animal style and a Flying Dutchman, the cashier confirmed that I knew what I was ordering and that I really wanted it. That was good, but I think the 3×3 was better. If a 3×3 isn’t enough food for me in the future, I’ll just get 2 of them.