Stay In Your Element

John R Beyer always stays in his element

Laureen and I generally never recommend one hotel over another unless we have had a tremendous stay or a terrible stay during our many travels. And believe me when I say we have had some awesome stays in the past and some dismal ones.

When we stayed at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva, Fiji. That was one to talk about. A suite that overlooked Suva Bay and, further in the distance, the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. Fabulous restaurants and a bar, attended by waiters and waitresses just waiting for us to order another drink. Well, waiting for me mainly.

Then we stayed in a thatched hut along the Amazon River in Peru, where guests were advised not to venture out into the jungle alone at night. Heck, the size of the insects crawling beneath our hammocks got us thinking that this was not where a sane person would wander day or night.

Our home away from home on the Amazon River, Peru

As any traveler knows, accommodations can either enhance an experience or detract from that experience. Let’s be honest, traveling is not cheap unless you are a good sprinter and can land on an empty boxcar in one leap.

So, as we travel, we look for the best quality in places to spend our nights. Are we always correct? Nope, but we do our best, like most folks who want to go out and explore.

After a recent blog, we received a couple of emails asking why we don’t recommend a place here or there. It is as if we travel and never stay the night. We fly to Italy and then return the same day without putting our tired heads on pillows.

We’re not travel agents or work for hotel chains. We go out around the nation or world and explore the best we can, but a couple of questions make sense. So, for this blog, we will discuss a place that we stayed in recently in San Diego.

America’s Finest City, the nickname for San Diego, is a place we love to visit no matter the time of year. In fact, I lived there a million years ago before moving north to the High Desert. After visiting time and again, Laureen and I joined the marina crowd for years and had a floatel; that name was given to our boat by our loving daughters. A floating hotel which they loved to use in the perpetually beautiful weather of San Diego.

The Beyer floatel

So, recently I suggested a weekend away. Laureen jumped at the idea, and we decided we wanted a place that we could just park our car and take the San Diego Trolley around town. 

After a bit of research, I came upon a newly constructed hotel by Marriott: The Element, in Mission Valley, right off Interstate 8.

The Element was completed in June of 2026 and boasted an eco-friendly, laid-back atmosphere for their guests. It was only a three-minute walk to the Rio Vista trolley station, which meant our vehicle could just sit in the parking lot for a couple of days, saving the cost of fuel and parking fees for the places we wanted to visit.

The trolley is a short 2 or 3 minute walk from the Element Hotel

San Diego has an extensive trolley system that allows passengers the comfort and affordability to go pretty much anywhere they want in this city by the bay. The tracks run for nearly 70 miles North, South, East, and West. A visit to the Mexico border? Hop on board. A visit to the snooty, rich enclave of La Jolla? Hop on board. Visiting relatives in Santee? Hop on board. Want to go Downtown? Hop on board.

It is a great system, and we took full advantage of it on this recent trip.

After a long day of riding the trolley and visiting Downtown, Little Italy, and Old Town, it was time to enjoy the spacious room that we had booked. 

Old Town geared up for the Day of the Dead festivities

Our home base was The Element, which shares a large plot of land with the Marriott right next door. Both hotels are interlinked in the services rendered for their guests. The picturesque waterfall pool at the Marriott is enjoyed by guests from both hotels. There are gyms, restaurants, and bars that patrons can enjoy during their stay in San Diego. The hotel is very family-oriented, with each room having a small kitchen, large refrigerator, microwave, and more than enough room for a large family to be comfortable.

One item that is not shared is the bicycles that The Element loans out to their guests. Tired of the trolley and wanting to stretch our legs, Laureen and I took advantage and rode several miles along the paths next to the San Diego River. Helmets are provided, as well as a written waiver in case a careless rider takes a header on Mission Center Road.

Laureen Beyer loving the free bike

The hotel also offers free breakfasts cooked on-site by professional chefs. They strive to be healthy, forgoing the usually highly processed breakfasts that most other hotels we have stayed at provide.

Our favorite breakfast was one egg, medium-cooked, laid upon a bed of mushrooms, ham, sweet potatoes, corn, onion, and spices. It was delicious.

Dinners have a large menu, from Flat Top Smash Cheeseburgers to Mediterranean Grilled Chicken Wraps. Of course, there are sides like the Tzatziki and Dill Pickle Chips ot the Salami and Fontina Board.

We had a view west toward Downtown overlooking the green belt surrounding the San Diego River. It was peaceful, quiet, and just a great place to rest and get re-energized for further adventures in the morning.

Overlooking the San Diego River from the Element Hotel

And, yes - San Diego has so much to offer for a weekend or longer visits.

John can be contacted at beyersbyways@gmail.com

For further information:

https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sanme-element-san-diego-mission-valley/overview/?scid=f2ae0541-1279-4f24-b197-a979c79310b0

https://www.sdmts.com/transit-services/trolley

Meteor Crater, Arizona

Astronaut practicing near Meteor Crater

Buzz Aldrin looked at the rim of the massive crater hovering five stories above him. It was treacherous terrain, but Aldrin, being a part of the exclusive group of Apollo astronauts, was not nervous. It was his job to explore where no one had explored before.

The heavy suit hindered his movements, but Aldrin knew he had a job to do, and no difficulty would stand in his way.

Suddenly, his right boot caught a rock sideways, sending him to the ground with a painful crunch. Worse, though, was that a gaping tear had ripped through the suit's arm, and Aldrin knew what could happen within moments.

On the moon’s surface, he may lose consciousness within 15 seconds as his brain depletes the last of his oxygen supply. Since there would no longer be any artificial pressure within the suit, the water in his body would immediately begin to boil at normal body temperature. Finally, the lack of oxygen would cause his death within one or two minutes.

This was a serious situation, but the iconic adventurer would have another day to ponder that tear in the arm of his suit. This was Meteor Crater in Arizona, and NASA had just learned a valuable lesson.

Suits to function on the moon or other planets must have redundancy after redundancy to ensure a simple fall will not end catastrophically, thus ending any hopes of a successful mission. By the time NASA sent a man to the moon, the suits had 21 layers to ensure the astronaut was as perfectly protected from any unforeseen and possibly tragic situations.

Laureen and John Beyer enjoying Meteor Crater, Arizona

During the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would utilize the first impact crater recognized on Earth for their astronaut training, gearing up for the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969, and follow-up missions.

Mining area and astronaut training grounds, Meteor Crater, Arizona

Colonel Buzz Aldrin, who would become the second person to ever step onto the surface of the closest celestial neighbor, may have been grateful for that tumble he had taken within the confines of Meteor Crater, way back on Earth in Arizona.

Meteor Crater, 44 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, is now a mecca for those who are interested in not only space but also what sometimes falls from space.

Early geologists believed the three-quarters-of-a-mile-wide by nearly 600 feet deep crater was the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. 

Meteor Crater, Arizona

One man, Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer, saw the crater for himself in 1903 and proposed that the nearly circular crater was caused by a meteor, and not volcanic activity.

Daniel Barringer

The scientific world scoffed, but the stubborn self-made man spent the next 27 years digging in the center of the crater looking for that elusive meteor, along with dozens of skilled workers he hired through the years. He never found the meteor and suffered a massive heart attack on November 30, 1929.

Neither the engineer nor his contemporaries understood that when a meteor enters Earth’s atmosphere, nearly 90% of its mass is burned off by the friction of speeding at 26,000 miles per hour, as was the case with the meteor striking the Arizona High Desert. Thus, this meteor was only 

Dig as he might, Barringer was never going to find a large meteor, only tiny shards that were blasted all over the surrounding desert for miles. 

Viewing window looking toward Flagstaff to the northwest

It would take four more decades before planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker told the world that Mr. Barringer had been correct.

Shoemaker studied the crater sides and floor, and compared them to craters left after atomic bomb detonations. He referred to ‘shocked rocks’ and microscopic high-pressure minerals like coesite that had been pulverized by a hyper-velocity impact.

Just like Barriniger had once theorized.

Meteor Crater is only 50,000 years old, relatively young compared to the North Pole Dome Impact Crater, which could date back three billion years. Or the most famous one, the Chicxulub, which plummeted into the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, killing off nearly 75% of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.  

Nevertheless, Daniel Barringer will forever go down in history as the man who first recognized a meteor impact crater on Earth.

And that is a pretty huge legacy.

John R. Beyer getting ready for next mission

John can be contacted at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

For further information: https://meteorcrater.com/

We Will Never Forget

 

This beautiful park in Winslow, Arizona, is dedicated to the 9/11 victims. The two steel beams are from the fallen towers. This small town along Route 66 will, like all of us, never forget the horror forced upon the United States by Islamic Terrorists - nor should we.