Elk Grove

The Bonneville Salt Flats

Matt and I tarping the trailer to take to the landfill

We drove from Aspen to Elk Grove via Salt Lake City.  On the way, we really only stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats to take pictures.  It was pretty surreal – white salt everywhere and blinding light bouncing off the glassy surface.  We couldn’t actually go on to the salt, though, since they were filming a car commercial.

The drive through Nevada was nice.  I expected it to be sort of a wasteland, which it was, but it was also really beautiful.  There were plenty of interesting mountain ranges (duh, since we were in the basin and range territory), and the scenery was pretty calm and pleasing to the eye.

Our plan for Elk Grove was pretty simple – finish the trip up comfortably, go to Go Congress in Seattle, and find a rental house in San Francisco.

Oh and one other thing – Kristen really loves to clean her parents’ house when she’s there.  She considered this visit to be potentially the last time she’d have a solid few weeks to clean, so she set out on the ambitious task of blowing the whole thing up.  It was The Great Purge.  We went room by room, separating everything we found in every nook and cranny into donate vs. keep vs. trash piles.  I had to rent a 4’x8’ U-haul trailer to haul multiple loads of trash and recycling to the landfill, and a huge load of donations to Goodwill.  It was tiring, but the house looked great by the end, and should be easier to keep organized in the future.

Finding a rental house in San Francisco was more difficult.  The rental market in SF is even worse than in NYC.  Not only is there way more demand than supply, but the rules work differently.  In NYC, housing is first-come, first-served.  So the first qualifying applicant for a rental unit gets it (the purpose of this is so the landlord can’t racially profile people).  In San Francisco, the landlord gets to take lots of applications and review them all, so timing is less of an issue, but you feel like you’re on The Bachelor.  Plus, a lot of people here seem to hate pets.  I can’t even remember how many times we heard people tell us “we love cats, but one tenant’s cat peed on the floor and we had to re-do all the hardwood for $10,000”.  Who are all these cats that are peeing on floors?  Our cats have never peed on the floor.  When we finally found a landlord that was willing to consider pets, we had to get references for our cats.  Thank goodness our apartment in NYC had hardwood floors, and the management company there was able to say no damage was done to the unit when we had our cats in it.  That’s how ludicrous this was.

Anyway, we finally found a fantastic house in Oakland, right near Ben and Trisha.  It has a full, furnished basement, and is really nice.  We’re excited to move in!