I miss geocaching, old school style. Before quantity became the norm, and quality went out the door. I'm not saying there aren't good caches out there, but unless you know the people who put out good quality caches (which I thankfully do), it's like finding a needle in a haystack. I got down about the state of geocaching, and I didn't geocache at all last year. I do miss it, and maybe we'll have to go out and do a few this year. It just breaks my heart that so many caches are disgusting. I'm not saying that you have to spend a lot of money on a cache, but just a little effort would be great. Nowadays, you find a bunch of used junk drawer crap in a plastic bag, hanging in a tree by the side of the road.
A good cache, in my opinion, can bring the seeker to a beautiful, location (like Crooked Creek), offer a good challenge (puzzle caches), teach you something, or just be interesting in general (like with a theme, or aimed at kids). I'm not so much for the cache contents, but dirty junk drawer items show the placer didn't put any thought into the cache. If you don't have the money to even put some nifty or useful dollar store items as cache items, how about making something? Instead of placing 50 poor caches, why not put all your resources into a few really fantastic caches. Those are the caches that make people talk, and become one of the few "must visit" caches in the area.
I'm not sure if geocaching all over the world is also suffering from the quantity not quality syndrome, but I know that here in the Maritimes, it's in a sad state. I'm sure we'll go out and do the few caches in our area that we know are good, but it's just a pain in the rear to sift through so many caches that are horrible to find the few gems.
