So the other day I had to drop a rig off at the shop and the shop is up in Columbia Heights. (Lauria Racing and Repair, a shop I highly recommend). At any rate, I didn’t have a ride home so I walked back to the house, which isn’t that far, about two miles.

Rather than slog down Highway 2 back to town, I decided to cut through new the Benches Subdivision.

The first thing I noticed was the new dog kennel at the top of the hill on Rogers Road.

Dog kennels are hard to miss when 15-20 dogs are all barking at you, and just about anything else that moves.

Then I dropped down into the Benches subdivision where the first houses are just going up. You could hear the dogs barking up on the hill just as plain as day.

I can’t imagine these homes are going to be inexpensive, so I really hope the folks building there like the sound of dogs.

Let me make one thing clear: I don’t begrudge the kennel one bit. The kennel was there first. It went through the planning process just like the subdivision did after it.

But boy, if I bought a house in the Benches sight unseen, and there’s a lot of people buying stuff around here sight unseen, I would not be happy camper.

I like dogs as much as anyone, had one for years.

But I don’t like barking dogs and there’s plenty of it at least in the first tier of the Benches.

I suspect if the developer had taken down a few less trees, the noise wouldn’t be so bad.

But they didn’t.

Buyer beware, I guess.

——

It is with sadness I report two deaths of men I had a host of pleasant conversations with over the years. Brian Peck was an environmentalist and grizzly advocate and while we didn’t always agree, we had plenty of pleasant encounters. Over the past few years I would often see Brian and his wife sitting on the grass along McDonald Creek in the evenings, eating their dinner while they waited for the beavers to come out of their lodge, which was just across the creek. It was always nice to see them, enjoying Glacier in the way it’s supposed to be enjoyed.

Dave Yeats was always fun to visit with. He worked in Glacier Park’s sign shop for years and you can still see much of his handiwork today in Glacier. Yeats was also a longtime bowhunting instructor and an avid hunter himself. I last saw Dave this fall, when he and his family planted more than 500 trees on their property along Rogers Road, reverting a field back to a forest. I drove by the field just the other day and the trees looked to be doing well. Both men made their mark on this corner of the Earth. They’ll be missed.