Distribute Space Between Objects Along Path?

I have a series of objects or possibly symbols that I need to space equidistant between each other along a path. I am trying to illustrate how some boards can be aligned to simulate a curve. I have tried to use the blend tool, but it has its quirks which I try to compensate for. Here are my steps:

Needless to say, I would prefer a different way to handle this in the future since I seem to run into this all the time. Notice that as early as Step 4 you can tell that it's not going to work very well. Not to mention that if you blend from a start point to and end point, you pretty much should be able to expect that the start point and end point won't move. If, for example, the start point is not touching the path when you replace spline, it should add the offset angle and distance from the spline to the list of calculations it performs to get the endpoint (including it's offset and rotation). I still don't see why it isn't a blatant error that the blend tool modifies your start and end points...If I wanted them modified to blend, I would have moved them to begin with.

Anybody know of any way to effectively distribute shapes along a path that A) preserves start and end orientation and offset from the path, and B) actually distributes the space between the elements along the path?

Thanks in advance for any advice.