hudsonfam

Great topic. We're still new at this and very excited about any cache find - micro or not, swag or not, etc. but we do really enjoy finding *something* that we can take back as a memento of finding that cache. Some of the things we have chosen are a couple of chess pieces, a wooden coin, and a tiny green army man. We don't want anything big and don't require anything we can actually use or the kids can play with - we are just collecting our mementos and have a special shelf for them. It's a tangible reward for finding the cache, but real "swag" isn't what we're looking for - although we do enjoy trading up and try to leave behind something fun for someone else. I was, however, disappointed when we found an ammo can cleverly hidden in a beautiful public garden only to discover a couple of broken toys and a very dirty package containing some stickers and a bunch of business cards and other scraps of paper. The original cache left by the CO was quite nice and very extensive - geocachers obviously haven't been trading up or trading at all.

We're also new and I totally understand the feeling. I don't like feeling "defeated" by a cache we can't find - and two of them are seriously driving me up a wall right now. And we sometimes have all four of us looking at the same time and still come up empty handed. I had wondered if it would be ok to ask the CO for a clue - so glad to hear we can do that, but I'm going to try a couple more times first. I'm stubborn like that.

Thanks for this topic - I have avoided a few caches because there were just too many muggles around and I felt really self-conscious and I wondered how other people are finding them. Stealth is definitely not my specialty.

I read a great quote a couple of weeks ago that has really stuck with me - "How other people act is their own karma. How you react is yours." Let them have their false logs if that makes them feel good, although I have no idea how or why it would. I'm just going to worry about my own finds and enjoy the wonderful journey that the "couch cacher" deprives themself of.

We're still very new and I'm not surprised at all that we have a high percentage of DNFs - I expect there to be a learning curve and that we will become more accustomed to finding the hidden items the more experience we get. The only ones that do really bug me are the DNFs that are a difficulty level of "1" and there's tons of logs saying how quick and easy the find was! lol