Benchmarking?

I never have understood the draw of benchmarking. Other than people into surveying and cartography, I don't understand why so many people are enthralled with these little disks. The historic survey stones make more sense to me, but why the modern ones? I mean, who cares? Why would someone go visit this tiny circle of bronze/brass/whatever the hell it's made of.

Personally I breathed a sigh of relief back when the "European Benchmarks" category was created because I thought that maybe continental BM categories might stop the grid from ending up with a cat for every country - as bad as the State Historic Marker categories. But it didn't stop new specific BM categories from being formed. Recently there have been two new benchmarking categories created. In spite of the European BM category, new French and Czech BM categories have been created. Surely this is a sign that the voting process isn't working to do what it was put in place to do? Are there really that many BM fanatics out there that these new country specific BM categories can pass? I don't think so.



At the top of the post you see a photo of a benchmark. So would you visit that? What about the photo above? It was taken up above the area where the benchmark photo above was taken. Now that view of Deception Pass, Pass Island, and the San Juan Islands is waymarkable. The CCC built arch bridge that I stood on to take the photo is waymarkable. But the 5 benchmarks that are clustered on a rock below? Yeah, I waymarked them to get the icon, but I don't think I've waymarked a benchmark since, and I surely wouldn't visit one unless it had an interesting history and scenic location to make the visit worth its while.