I'm new too, living in the UK, and at the moment testing the water without a GPS too, as money is tight, and I wanted to know wether I was going to get the ' bug' or not first! I started on Dec 2nd and have found 30, but it
does take a lot of work without a GPS, but as I am now ' smitten ' I will be buying soon and upgrading my membership. I examine the location as much as possible using Google Earth, which can even pinpoint which tree etc in some cases, read the hint and all the logs, and at this stage will even look at spoilers, I then take notes on these things into the field with me and my ' hit rate' has been quite good so far ( as a keen walker I do have reasonable compass/ map skills, so I suppose this helps ) where I have trouble is when there is a stretch of hedgerow or something without any distinguishing features, without a GPS lock, searching a large amount of possible hides can sometimes be futile. I hope that now I am hooked, that when I get my GPS, I wiil benefit from the steep learning curve I have given myself and enjoy the hobby even more, but yes caching without a GPS is much, much harder, so you are up against it Voiceroad, if you can afford or borrow a GPS, i,m sure it will fall into place for you, but as others have said you need to read whatever guidance notes are available.
I have a question of my own now! RE-VISITS, two part question, 1. Do many cachers re-visit previous finds to pick up or drop off trackables? 2. How does this compute in your records when you re-log? I have a coin I need to get moving and one of my previous finds would be the most appropriate at this time, rather than hanging on to it and waiting for something similar!
Thanks for your indulgance and HI to everyone, loving this game and the community around it!