Your least favourite part?

[+Narilka]

What's your least favourite part of geocaching? The DNFs? The spiders? The poisonous plants? The muggled caches?

 

I've recently discovered that mine is the "waiting for my cache to be approved for publish".

[MisterEFQ]

The driving, so I can get to an area that is not urban micros.

 

And really bad swag.

[+Warturtle]

Mosquitos. And not having enough consecutive time to do the big hikes.

[Steinninn]

Unoriginal cache in an uninteresting place hidden in a place that makes me look for 20 minutes. What a waste of time.

[+ARHogFanz]

Poison ivy and the fact that in the south in the summertime, at least this year, it gets too darn hot to do much more than PNG's.

[+Redfist]

Poison ivy and the fact that in the south in the summertime, at least this year, it gets too darn hot to do much more than PNG's.

 

I got poison ivy doing caches in upstate NY a few weeks ago. Now I'm back home in Phoenix... where it is hot.

 

Early morning hikes for me!

[+Corp Of Discovery]

Most of the time for me it's writing the online logs...

[+LocutusMIT]

Yellowjackets. Most of the scars have faded, but I still find that I'm a little timid when bushwhacking. Gotta work that out of my system.

[+captnemo]

Unoriginal cache in an uninteresting place hidden in a place that makes me look for 20 minutes. What a waste of time.

+1 and a micro in an area where a larger cache would not be a problem.

[+dorqie]

I HATE mosquitos. If I am struggling to open a container while being eaten alive, I get really grumpy.

[+Coldgears]

I like urban caches, I like extreme rural caches (farmland and mountains.) hate suburb caching, I'm moving to the city ASAP once I get through college and find a job.

[+Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat]

The traveling between caches. Why can't I just get beamed there?

 

(Although sometimes the journey between is very scenic)

[+sword fern]

Urban caching. I truly suck at it, but i have found a few easy and awe inspiring Urbans.

[+Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat]

Another one I thought I'd add:

When I can't find an access/parking area.

[+NanCycle]

Micros in pine, or spruce, or cedar, or juniper trees.

[+Team Van Dyk]

Ticks, Mosquitos, poison ivy. In that order.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Bears that chew on my cache containers!

[+BlueDeuce]

Caches in locations where I end up having to be the one explaining what I am doing there.

[+ngrrfan]

1)... Any cache that is "UP"... seems you have to hike UP to a cache and then back down... OR you have to hike down to the cache and then back UP to the car. Seems like 50% of the time we are hiking UP.

 

2)... Hiking several miles in the woods only to find a bison tube.

 

3)... TB/Coin thieves or people who don't log TBs/Coins in a timely manner.

 

4)... OH!!!! COs that don't take care of their caches and perform maintenance in a timely manner.

Edited July 15, 2011 by ngrrfan

[AZcachemeister]

Any (ANY) cache listed as 'Size Not Chosen'.

[+JL_HSTRE]

That it gets too hot and humid (and mosquito-infested) in the Florida summer for good rural caching.

 

Dishonorable mention to poorly maintained caches. I'd rather find an ammo can with nothing inside but a dry logbook than a film can with a moldy logbook or a broken plastic container full of wet swag.

[+cheech gang]

Hint: None Needed

[+jindi kid]

Not being allowed to drive yet

and also a film can in the middle of the woods

[+Chief301]

Having to drive over 30 miles to get at caches I haven't done yet.

 

Unresponsive CO's who don't answer emails and don't respond to repeated requests to check their coordinates, check to see if the cache is missing after numerous DNF's, etc.

 

A lack of publicly accessible outdoor spaces to hide caches, forcing a proliferation of parking lot micros.

[niraD]

My least favorite part would have to be caches that have gotten wet, stayed wet, and turned into a moldy/mildewy mess.

[Krydos]

Mosquitoes, wasps, nettles, poison ivy, ticks, chiggers, heat and humidity. Hm. I think this may actually just be a general dislike for summer...

 

I guess my least favorite thing about Geocaching is the inability to log TB's correctly, or possibly they're just stealing them, but either way the TB's not being where they're supposed to be.

 

Honestly though, the only thing I really don't like is summer...

[+Ambrosia]

Micros in pine, or spruce, or cedar, or juniper trees.

 

Yes. I'm allergic, especially to juniper/arborvitae types. I have some gloves, but I seem to never have them when those types come up. I have to find a cache once I'm at the location, so I get pretty miserable and grumpy. If I wash fairly quickly afterwards, it's not as bad.

[sabrefan7]

People who cant take the time to read a cache description. Then complain about how hard it is to find, why is it in the woods, cant you make it easier, its not kid friendly, why cant you tell me the path to take, the weeds are to high, we had to walk to far,

[+cx1]

Most of the time for me it's writing the online logs...

 

Same for me.

[+Ms.Scrabbler]

knowing for almost a week I have a wet cache in need of maintenance and work & my car are not cooperating

[+webscouter.]

Unoriginal cache in an uninteresting place hidden in a place that makes me look for 20 minutes. What a waste of time.

 

You know you can walk away at any time without finding the cache right?

[+Ambrosia]

Unoriginal cache in an uninteresting place hidden in a place that makes me look for 20 minutes. What a waste of time.

 

You know you can walk away at any time without finding the cache right?

What?!? No you can't! What are you talking about, man?

[+briansnat]

Punji sticks

[+popokiiti]

Missing a word in the description which could have made a difference between a find and DNF. I got into trouble for that recently

[Night_Hiker]

Bug bites are my #1 also tho Caches hidden on the ground in areas with large amounts of leaf fall. People need to realize that fire hydrant micros are not fun and shouldn't put one on everyone they come across

[+The_Incredibles_]

Trying to find time to go caching.

 

Neglected caches.

 

**Trying to find a spot to hide a cache where the promixity is OK.

 

DNFing when the last 5 people said QEF.

Edited July 16, 2011 by The_Incredibles_

[+BaylorGrad]

Bugs making that buzzing noise in my ear.

 

Driving to caches when I'm not headed down the road for any other reason (but if I have a goal and I'm caching on the way, that's not bothersome at all).

 

Texas heat.

[Clan Riffster]

That's a tough question. There are a few things that can have a negative impact on my pleasure level, but these are usually addressed before I ever leave the house, through careful tweaking of my PQs. Perhaps I should look at this from a different angle? The things that are most important to me are:

 

Location.

My personal bias leads me to a strong preference for natural settings. I don't need pristine waterfalls miles from nowhere, though these are nice. If I've got some trees, some critters, maybe a little swampy, I'm happy as a clam. Locations that I don't enjoy being in, are also locations that I don't like to cache in, and these include cities and suburbia. As I get closer to ground zero, my preferences kick in again, and I get even more selective. Guardrails, lamp posts and dumpsters all rate pretty low on my "Kewl Spot" index, so caches in those locations are less pleasurable to me.

 

Purpose.

a facet of this game I really love is that it allows complete strangers to share those unique spots they have discovered over the years. I really feel like I've connected somehow, with someone I've never met, when they share their special spots with me. One question I like to ask myself is, "Why did they bring me here?". Often, I can answer that by just reading the cache page, finding out what it was about that spot that the cache owner felt was special. If my inner self determines that the only reason they brought me here was to give me another smiley, I'll likely just walk away.

 

Container.

I think it's neat that BillyBob can place a container out in the world, fully exposed to the elements, and I can come along a week, a month or even 5 years later, and find that the contents are still in good shape. Kinda reminds me of little time capsules. I actively dislike having to encounter wet, moldy logs. It boggles my mind to see folks deliberately selecting containers that have failed, time and again, to protect their contents. A quality container can be had for about $0.60, so I can't quite grasp why someone would ever place a crappy one.

 

Cache pages.

I am an avid reader. I truly enjoy delving into a good book, a well written poem, blogs, forums, even cache pages. Spin me a tale about yourself, the location, or even something entirely nonsensical, and I will love it. Give me a cache page with less words on it than Rosie O'Donnell has tattooed on her butt, combined with poor grammar and sophomoric sentence structure, and it's a turn off.

 

Lengthy logs.

Folks ask me all the time what kind of caches I like the most. My standard answer is something to the effect of, "I like caches that get long logs". While that's virtually impossible to quantify, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I know it when I see it. Speaking in general terms, as much as is possible for such a subjective topic, typically, those caches which get the longest logs are those which offer the grandest adventures. When I look at a cache page and see a lot of acronyms, it's a fair bet that it's not one I'm going to enjoy. For me, a direct translation of "TNLNSL" is "Your cache sucked".

 

Swag.

While I almost never trade for swag, I do love pawing through it while reading the logbook, connecting each item in the cache, with the person who left it there. I also enjoy leaving signature items, knowing that someone, at some unknown point in the future, might find it and enjoy it. Because of this wholly personal bias, if everything else is equal, I prefer the largest cache which an area can adequately support.

 

The list goes on, and on...

[+A & J Tooling]

Coming up with excuses why I drove the route I did to get some caches along the way. "But Honey, the light bulbs at the store over in Clio (20 miles) are 5 cents cheaper then the ones 2 miles down the road..." I drive 57 miles (one way) to work every day. I take a different route each day to get at least one cache.

[+geodarts]

The search is probably the least interesting part of the game for me. So, after a long hike through forests devastated by sudden oak death, searching for a camo'd bison tube hidden in a field of mossy rocks with tree cover to ensure the coordinates are soft, is not particularly enjoyable. Looking for that same container in a juniper hedge next to a house with a barking dog, right across the sidewalk from a playground, is also not that much fun. Or looking for a cache hidden in a place that people use as a garbage dump or outdoor toilet. And if an angry property owner comes up to me and wants to know what I am doing on his or her land . . . .

 

For much the same reasons, a puzzle that involves three leaps of faith, knowledge of computer science, higher math, the enigma code or other such things, feels more like work than play to me - although the ignore list mitigates these types of caches.

Edited July 16, 2011 by mulvaney

[+ChileHead]

The parking lots.

[+Chokecherry]

The search is probably the least interesting part of the game for me. So, after a long hike, searching for a camo'd bison tube hidden in a field of mossy rocks with tree cover to ensure the coordinates are soft, would not be particularly enjoyable. Looking for that same container in a juniper hedge next to a house with a barking dog, right across the sidewalk from a playground, would also not be that much fun. Or looking for a cache hidden in a place that people use as a garbage dump or outdoor toilet.

 

I have to agree there. I typically don't do the caches that are hidden in an overly difficulty way or with soft coordinates. I have a very short attention span once I get to an area. Finding a nano glued to a pine cone on a heavily coned tree is not my idea of fun. Nor is finding a film can in an old lilac bush. I don't necessarily need a quick find or even even a dull find (because you can still be creative and not difficult) but after half an hour or in many cases less I'm done messing around with it and off I go to the next one.

 

Logging trackables is not a favorite part of this for me either. Once I'm done for the evening and am logging my caches online having to jump around and enter numbers repeatedly and log the trackables just isn't that much fun for me.

 

Oddly enough getting started down the trail isn't that fun for me either. I usually like that middle part of the journey better when I know I'm headed in the right direction and making some progress but getting all parked and everything unloaded and the back pack on. Reading the pertinent information one more time etc. After a few caches in a day I'm not as amused by that. usually by that point i'm just stuffing a pen in to my bra and taking off into the woods with my unit.

[sabrefan7]

Punji sticks

Man oh man they can leave a mark

[+Team Van Dyk]

The search is probably the least interesting part of the game for me. So, after a long hike through forests devastated by sudden oak death, searching for a camo'd bison tube hidden in a field of mossy rocks with tree cover to ensure the coordinates are soft, is not particularly enjoyable. Looking for that same container in a juniper hedge next to a house with a barking dog, right across the sidewalk from a playground, is also not that much fun. Or looking for a cache hidden in a place that people use as a garbage dump or outdoor toilet. And if an angry property owner comes up to me and wants to know what I am doing on his or her land . . . .

 

For much the same reasons, a puzzle that involves three leaps of faith, knowledge of computer science, higher math, the enigma code or other such things, feels more like work than play to me - although the ignore list mitigates these types of caches.

 

So, you just don't like geocaching at all, then? I'm kidding (sort of), but am curious what part it is you like given the above and given the nature of the game.

[+geocat_]

#1 TICKS!!!

#2 more muggles to dodge

#3 mosquitoes

 

But I am not complaining. I live in Ohio and don't miss the snow and ice!

[+Ecylram]

Unoriginal cache in an uninteresting place hidden in a place that makes me look for 20 minutes. What a waste of time.

This would be my first choice, followed closely by anything involving a Juniper or a Spruce.

[+Flintstone5611]

The forums

[+lamoracke]

hearing about people doing 1000-1500 caches on a power trail which features the same cache hide over and over again. Makes caching purely about the total #s. To each their own I guess though.

[+TerraViators]

Holly bushes, cedar trees, hints that aren't a hint, moldy logs, CO's who refuse to answer emails or maintain caches, cachers who abuse the swag rules, PI, not knowing I have to climb a tree until I get there.

[+brodiebunch]

Rattlesnakes