grannyoldr

I was actually the one that originally wanted to go benchmarking, not Bicknell.

Here's two we found around here yesterday: AA3625 AA3626 I love the orange carsonite witness posts. They make things easier.

Only 10 miles? We live about 15 miles away from the beltway and the house fairy has totally taken over in Sterling. All around Loudoun county it's nothing but the house fairy, in actuality. We were in WVA yesterday and the house fairy was all over the place (Charlestown and Harpers Ferry). Now, if you are talking about Maryland, I wouldn't know, haven't really started looking for benchmarks there yet. I'm told Maryland has different zoning laws which don't do as much damage as Virginia does. I didn't know triangulation stations were usually on private property - I'll make a note of that in the future.

On an earlier thread someone suggested it was if they reference marks were also surveyed to a high degree of accuracy. If they were actually surveyed then they usually got PID's, and if they were just measured out they did not. I can't find the thread now though.

Hmmm. I logged in as myself on the Geocaching website, but it still had my fiancee', Leo, as signed in on Groundspeak. Leo didn't get a sex change!!! Thanks- Rachel

I think it's just northern Virginia that is a hostile environment - when Leo and I go outside of NoVA, we have a better chance of finding benchmarks. Rachel

Hello, Does anyone else use a Treasure Hunter on their benchmarking trips, and what type do you use? We are seriously considering getting one - we want one that does the job but isn't going to cost us a whole lot of money. Right now I'm searching and only coming up with metal detectors from anywhere from $80 to over $3000. Thanks- Rachel

I'm jealous!

Interesting way of doing it. The way Bicknell and I do it is the following: 1. Figure out what town/city we want to try (e.g., Berryville, Leesburg, Lovettsville, etc). 2. Find a zipcode for the city we want to try. 3. Look up the zipcode in the benchmark search 4. Print out the list of benchmarks. Print out the information about the benchmarks that we want to go to. The ones we usually go to are the ones that no one has tried to find yet, or at least taken the time to log. We will use the USGS database to see if there are any newer updates on the sites, but we mostly print out what's on the geocaching wesite. 5. Bicknell loads the BM's onto his computer and our two GPS's. 6. We take our high speed cellular broadband EVDO card with us. Sometimes we find BMs on the GPS (we usually load up by county) that we didn't have in our paper list, and the EVDO card allows us to get on the Internet and look up what's there. 7. Go to the site and use the paper directions to find the landmarks in the instructions. 8. Hopefully find the Benchmark from here! I guess Bicknell and I mostly go by the seat of our pants and hope a benchmark comes out of it. I think if we did more research it wouldn't be as fun.

Yes, Bicknell and I have found this out, to our dismay. That's why we try to go out to places that haven't been touched too much by new construction yet. But it's fun all the same.

I benchmark hunt with my fiancee', Leo Bicknell. It's much easier to find BM's with more than person.

There's only so many of us out there finding 3/4th of a million benchmarks in the US. ;-) My fiancee' and I have noticed that quite a few BM's just don't seem to exist anymore because of new construction of buildings, especially houses. I never thought I would see the day that Leesburg became part of Northern Virginia, and that people from Winchster, VA or Charlestown, WV would be commuting to the NoVA area. What general vicinity at this moment are you trying to survey, or is it really all around NoVA? My fiancee' and I mostly search for outside of the Beltway BMs in small towns where there hasn't been too much constructions yet.

We started at 10am and stopped at 2pm. We went all around Leesburg, Lucketts and Lovettsville, Virginia and found four benchmarks! That's a benchmark every hour and fifteen minutes. Of course, we didn't find about 10 other benchmarks we went to. This has been the most benchmarks we've found in a day. What is your record of finding benchmarks?

I must agree - I am a woman of high character and surpassing intelligence. We'll probably benchmark while on the honeymoon! Rachel

Where exactly is this search engine? Rachel