There are secret treasures hidden all over the world. There may be thousands within twenty miles of your house and you do not even realize it. These treasures are hidden by normal people like you and I, and they hide them with the intention of other people finding them.

But how do you find them?

With a GPS unit. In case you have been living under a rock, GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and uses satellites to pinpoint location as well as find routes and distances to other locations. Personal GPS has contributed to the growth of a international game known as geocaching. The center for this game is located at geocaching.com where you can sign up for free and find thousands of hidden caches in your very own neighborhood.

So, what exactly is geocaching? Quite simply, geocaching is the act of treasure hunting.

Someone will hide a cache and pinpoint its location using GPS. They will then post the longitude and latitude coordinates of that cache at geocaching.com and wait for people to find it. Sometimes the listing will also give clues and hints, telling you how to find the cache, and sometimes you have nothing to go on except the coordinates.

Looking for the cache is also simple, in theory. All you need to do is search geocaching.com and find a cache that you would like to find. Chances are that there will be multiple caches that you want to find, and as you start finding them you will become addicted. Take the coordinates to that cache and plug them into your GPS unit. Then go to those coordinates. Simple enough right?

Not so simple once you reach those coordinates. The cache is never in plain sight, and you may have to do some searching to find the hidden treasure. Be sure that there are no regular people, or muggles (a term borrowed from Harry Potter), in the area. Geocaching is a secret society and no one can know what you are looking for, or see where the cache is hidden.

The only rule when it comes to hiding caches is that they can not be buried. Other than that they can be hanging in a tree, stuffed in a dead tree trunk, hidden in a bush, or even disguised as something such as a rock or stick. Some caches are harder to find than others, and the way they are hidden is only limited by the imagination of the hider and the rule that it can not be buried.

Once you find the cache you sign the logbook that you were there, and in most caches you can trade an item. Some caches are so small that the only thing they can hold is a tiny roll of paper that serves as a logbook. Others are large enough to hold a variety of items that people leave and trade in order to share treasure with other geocachers.

If you take something you must leave something of equal or greater value. There is no rule that you must take something, and you can always leave something without taking something. Once you sign in and enjoy the contents of the cache you then hide the cache in the exact same spot that it was found.

The final step to geocaching is to go back to geocaching.com and log your visit. Go back to the cache's page and click the link to log your visit. Put in a few notes about your find and share your adventure with everyone. You can even upload a picture of your find if you have taken one.

When looking at a cache's page it is a good idea to read the logs and look at the pictures, because sometimes you will pick up on hints as to where the cache is hidden, or how hard or easy it is to find.

After all that you continue your adventure with more geocaching. There is a lot of information on the website as well as a forum. Geocaching has become not only a treasure hunting game, but an entire community of people that like adventure.

If you enjoy the outdoors, and having adventures then geocaching is for you. It does not matter if you are in the woods in the middle of nowhere, or in the center of a large urban city, geocaches are everywhere and geocaching is never too far away.