It could be a good thing - the dreams will remind to double-check your luggage and be sure to bring extra batteries so you don’t run into the same problems on the real trip!
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I’m so glad I decided to check back in on this thread! I recently started a project for Organisms found at gas stations and I’m sure you would make an excellent contributor! Maybe you could give it a join sometime? :)
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Once when I was a child a large insect (a beetle? lighter brown and darker brown speckled) landed on my dad’s shirt while he was pumping gas, and when he tried to remove it, it hissed at him. We were so surprised we kept bringing up the story years later. I wonder what kind of insect it was. I think we were in Arizona at the time.
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Grant’s Hercules Beetle maybe? From Wikipeida: “If rhinoceros beetles are disturbed, some can release very loud, hissing squeaks. The hissing squeaks are created by rubbing their abdomens against the ends of their wing covers.”
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I was looking for something online and saw some photos of an abandoned farmhouse near here. Just arty photos of crumbling stonework and fallen timbers but I was sure I could see a plant I wanted to record so I tracked down the probable location on Google Earth, hiked down there yesterday and scoured the rubble for the plant. I was starting to think I had the wrong building when I finally found a small clump tucked amongst the stones. The rest of the family were out for the day so I decided it was better to sneak down there while they were gone than explain where I was going. 
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I know quite a few people who post photos taken by others (with their permission and credit). Would that work? Seems like such a shame to miss out!
I don’t want to post it on my account if I haven’t seen it myself. Also when he posts them on FaceBook I’m pretty sure all the metadata is lost which would make it hard for me to post accurate time and location.
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It’s fine to post other people’s photos as long as you also observed the organism, but posting other people’s observations is heavily discouraged.
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A big part of my job is recommended tracks, depending on the person asking I will often give the general tourist time, the blitzer time, and the bio-nerd time.
Like on a popular local 2.5 - 3 hour walk https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=-42.10552687478493&nelng=171.37116165318002&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=-42.12781051827934&swlng=171.3251564041566
there is over 800 species so far (Well map is rough, and includes up to a few hundred m off, so not just that track, but many of the slightly off track things will be on track). So you can easily spend many many days, doing it over and over, even just some short crawls, and keep finding stuff. So even after about 8 years, the 45 min segment still often takes over 3 hours.
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Your spouse wants to know why it took you so long to use the public restroom and you say there was a small cockroach on the floor and it was so fast it took a long time to get an in-focus picture.
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You spend at least 30 minutes a day identifying stuff others post
You look back at photos of family vacations regretfully because you weren’t into inaturalist at the time and missed a bunch of observations.
You scour the area you plan to go on vacation and figure out which species you want to try and find
You carry a clipon macrolens and a telephoto lens everywhere you go just in case
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You’re driving down the road and you see someone near a college campus get out and point their phone at something along the road and instantly tell the rest of the people in the car “Bet their using iNaturalist” and then were RIGHT
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…when the only thing that would make your Saturday night better is a few more 'bycids or nocturnal Aculeata
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…hikes with friends are a form of interval training. Take a photo, sprint to catch up, take a photo, sprint to catch up…
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Don’t forget all those squats! Photographer Yoga!
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Who needs to go to a gym when you do iNat? (and have a garden to tend and invasives to remove?)
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Recently I took a train from Pennsylvania to Louisiana and tried to do the same thing at every train stop. Some train stations are challenging - Amtrak could leave a few weeds! and then the “Ma’am, I wouldn’t get off the train right now - this isn’t a rest stop. We are leaving in just a minute…”
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Yep it saddens me too thinking of all the vacations that I didnt have Inaturalist on :(
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I do it all the time. Drop back take a photo and then sprint to catch up and do it all over again.
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… When your friends and family send you pictures via text for you to identify. I got about 8 photos last week! I keep trying to get them on Inaturalist but they don’t want to. I will never stop asking!
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