I think a good rule of thumb which should allow you to get experience before hiding your own GeoCache is to use the 1% rule. That means only hide 1% of the Caches you have found, so it would take 100 caches found before you would attempt to hide your one cache. Now I'm a bit of of a hypocrite, since I started hiding caches at about 50 Caches.
In retrospect I should have waited, as there was no creative thought in my initial caches since I only imitated those I had found, which at that point were mostly hidden in coniferous trees. I now dislike caches in coniferous trees, they don't offer any adventure, the reward at the end doesn't make you go Ahhh! They don't leave you with any lasting memory other than the scratches you received from digging around in the tree.
I realized after about 100 cache finds I had experienced some genuinely innovative caches such as; Chronicles of Narnia http://coord.info/GC2FF1Z and now was able to start thinking out of the box or tree as it were.
I am still not practicing what I preach and with almost 200 notches in my GPS (Caches Found) I have 9 caches hidden, but then my Dad always said, "Do as I say, not as I do!" well it worked for him. I would just suggest finding lots of variety before hiding your own Geocaches. You will be rewarded many times over by the truly interesting logs fellow Geocachers leave for you.
KEEP ON CACHIN'
BILL
B&CJones on Geocaching.com
I'm not following your 1% rule either, I think I'm closer to 10%. But then again a lot of the fun of caching is to hide something and see how many people go to find your cache. I've had just as much fun reading other peoples comments on my caches sometimes as I've had finding caches. Seeing what other people are doing with caches and finding other peoples hides will fill you in on what you can do with yours, but there's no experience like getting one out there and hiding it yourself.
ReplyDeleteI do have to disagree with Bill somewhat on the coniferous tree issue. We used to say in photography that a good photo was either a common look at an unusual item or an unusual look at a common item. I think it's the same thing in caching. If you are hiding something in a common area it's nice to have an unusual cache. Though I've been to pick up some caches that are just hanging in a tree but the location is everything. If there's a particular hard to reach place or spectacular view, a cache hanging in a tree isn't so bad at all.