I like hamburgers, and one of my favorite places is In-N-Out Burger, a West Coast chain.
When the wife and I made a trip to California, our first meal was burger and fries from the famous burger joint.
We had a late-night flight from XNA to Los Angeles International so we could avoid most of the traffic, the worst of which was at the U.S.-101/I-405 interchange. There have been times when we had to wait bumper to bumper. This trip, we made it from the airport to the hotel in under an hour.
It was so nice. I thought I was on I-49 late at night, the traffic was that light.
After checking into the hotel at 10:30, we asked if there was a burger place around. The clerk said In-N-Out was up the road. We were off.
Even at 10:30, there were plenty of customers eating in the restaurant and stopping by the drive-through. We were amazed.
In-N-Out has a very simple menu -- hamburger, cheeseburger, double-double (double meat, double cheese) and french fries. A variety of soda pop is served along with three flavors of shakes: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.
You can order a combo meal, but don't expect to save any money, at least that's what the clerk said. They just packaged the combo to simplify the menu. I was too tired to verify what she said. You can get a No. 1 (hamburger), No. 2 (cheeseburger) or No. 3 (double-double). They come with fries and a drink. They just added the costs of the three items and that's what you pay. No deals here.
We got two cheeseburgers, an order of fries and two waters. Our total was $5.60 plus tax. And the food was great.
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Remember when you could buy a hamburger for 15 cents? I realize it was the size of the dollar burgers you get at most fast-food burger places nowadays.
My buddies and I would get two, remove a top and a bottom, and make a double cheeseburger in the days before the Golden Arches had double cheeseburgers. We'd add an order of fries and that was dinner. Fries only came in one size back then.
There was no such thing as supersized. But you know, we were pretty satisfied when we left the restaurant.
In college, a group of us bet a mutual friend that he couldn't eat 10 regular burgers in one hour. He did it, buns and all, in less than an hour. He was stuffed. I can't imagine that was enjoyable.
However, it was fun to watch because the guy almost turned green eating the last one or two burgers. But he was happy because he won our money.
Enough about food.
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One of the great joys of vacationing is experiencing different things. Sure, we went wining at a couple of vineyards, and we even brought back some wine wrapped in bubble wrap and clothes to keep the bottles from breaking in our suitcase.
Yes, we ate seafood a couple of times at our favorite Morro Bay restaurant. We saw the weirdness of Venice Beach, walked along Hollywood Boulevard and among the stars on the sidewalk, and we window shopped at Rodeo Drive.
But probably the most exciting thing we did was go whale watching.
We've been whale watching before. We saw a couple of whales on a bone-chilling cruise 20 miles off the coast of Maine. We got skunked on a whale-watching cruise off Maui in Hawaii.
The California cruise was truly magnificent.
We had checked on whale-watching cruises the day before and thought we were going to go on one from Morro Bay, but it was canceled because there weren't enough people.
We called a couple other cruises, but they weren't going out in the afternoon. But they all said how great it was seeing the whales. One ship captain said it was the best morning of whale watching he'd ever had. Of course, it was without us.
We hooked up with another Morro Bay cruise, getting the last two seats on the boat. Well, boat is not an adequate description -- it was a glorified pontoon boat.
It was a sunny afternoon with calm seas as we headed out. We were in short sleeves, but once the clouds moved it got pretty chilly. When we were three to four miles from shore, we got our heavier jackets on.
We saw lots of humpback whales and a couple of baby whales. They were all around the boat. I can't say how many different whales we saw, but I suppose it was more than a dozen. At one point we could see spouts from five whales.
As we were watching two whales on one side of the boat, we heard a huge splash on the other side. By the time we all turned around, all that was left was a white spot where the whale had jumped from the water. We had missed a whale jumping all the way out of the water.
With dolphins and birds feeding on a school of anchovies, we watched as two whales plowed into the mass of birds and dolphins, scattering everybody. With the anchovies all to themselves, the whales moved in and out of the area.
After they finished their feast, the two whales headed our way. Shortly before they reached the boat, the two submerged and re-emerged on the other side of us. They got so close before they dived that we could see the little bumps on their noses.
We followed whales around the bay for three hours, and it was great fun. We'd never seen so many. And we didn't really notice how cold it had gotten until we started our 35-minute trip back to harbor.
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Throne is managing editor of The Weekly Vista.
Editorial on 09/10/2014