Don't feel bad WhereRWe, out of the 10 caches I hit yesterday, I had 3 DNF's IN A ROW
I chalked it up to snow cover until YOP told me that one of them was a real easy one. (I'm still using the snow cover story as long as possible.)
The bummer was that my DNF list had been cleared (except for archived caches). DNFs on my list bug me and I always go back. The worst ones I've done in 3 visits (like battleship for example)
I almost always try to find the cache without using the hints. If I'm under some time pressure to get to the next cache, I'll give up in 10-15 minutes, but I usually try to give it some time. My only peeve is when the hint includes info for parking, or other stuff that would be nice to know BEFORE setting out to actually find the cache. By the time you have been poking around in the woods for a half hour, you don't really need to know where to find the entrance to the park, etc.