JaneKathleen

I don't know anything about your GPSr, so I can't comment on whether that has anything to do with your success rate (I'm using an iPhone). But I can tell you that I have been caching for only a couple weeks, and my success rate has pretty consistently wavered somewhere between 50% and 25% in that time. It seems a lot of people (especially newbies) make at least two or three (or maybe even four or five) visits to a cache location before making the find. For me so far, I only get the super-easy ones on my first visit. More often that not, I need two or even three visits to a location before I can spot the hide (and that includes for hides marked at 1 or 1.5 stars). The little bit of experience I have has taught me that cache hiders can be very clever with their camouflage, and at least in urban areas there are lots of hollow places in our world that we never realize are hollow until we become geocachers.

I consider teasing to be the most flattering form of encouragement Thanks namiboy. I'm keeping at it

I have been caching for about two weeks now. Mostly urban since I live in a beach city. As of today, I have a total of 19 finds, and about that many (or maybe even a few more) DNFs. I'm learning everyday, and I'm having a lot of fun figuring things out (i.e. the different hide and camo types, etc.). I tend to cache in two different ways. 1) Solo caching done on the way to or from work, 2) Caching with my boyfriend, or if he is unavailable, some other random friend that I have dragged out of the house. Yesterday I went out with a friend and we had a really bad geo-day (searched for eight, only found three). Happily, we also got coffee, caught up on life, and generally enjoyed each others' company (as usual), BUT I came home tired, dirty, and a bit geo-discouraged. I don't want hints or clues here, because I like figuring it out on my own. But on the other hand, it actually crossed my mind last night that maybe my brain just isn't suited for caching. I would love some encouragement right now. Sometimes I go to a cache page and I see two or three DNFs with a hundred or two hundred finds. When it takes me two or three trips to locate that cache, I feel like I'm doing something wrong... I'd love to hear from some experienced cachers who didn't catch on right away either. This is normal, right?

You all are some beautiful people. I'm so glad I found this game

I'm a total n00b and from the city, but I must say that so far I am really enjoying caches that are well hidden in high traffic areas. Clever camo is awesome. I guess I like the idea of finding something that a million people have walked by without even noticing...