Test, but you can read it if you want to. There is actual content, and a picture.

Benchmarking is a natural companion to geocaching. Benchmarks thrill me a little more than geocaches, because these markers were never intended for a general audience, and so are not always in perfect hiding places. This one is an exception; it's located in Jacksonville Beach, ON Jacksonville Beach. The point is that the markers weren't put there for anyone's amusement, so they feel like a discovery for real. They're sometimes on people's lawns, for example. I followed the clues for a rural benchmark in New York and ended up peering through someone's mown grass to get a better look. I knocked on the door and asked permission to get closer, and the elderly man said 'yes,' but warned me that the government wouldn't like me taking a picture of it, since it was part of a covert operation. It sounds funny, but that benchmark was mounted in a raised concrete monument about five inches high in the middle of his yard, and that man had been trimming around it for 60 years. I'd start to invent reasons why I had had to do that 720 times, wouldn't you?

I'm trying a new way of emailing pictures to Blogger. We'll eventually be back in conservation mode.

ETA: This time I could send a picture, but no words. Words, no pictures. Pictures, no words. When will there ever be a tasty casserole of both?