Virtuals are few and far between. They're a dying breed since you can't make any new ones (at least on gc.com). "Earthcaches" are another type of virtual with no real cache to find. Just ignore those and hunt for "real" caches instead, it's easy to do.
Yeah the one she was turned off on was inside dinosaur valley state park. We were on our way between two real cache sites and decided to trip through the thorn and woods to find nothing it turned out. I can guarantee every time she now asks, "is it a virtual?"