You might walk by one every day, over the course of their numbers jumped up by more than a thousand totaling 141,655 locations in 214 countries. There are 47 of them within five miles of Everett, Oak Harbor can count 49 in close range and the Bremerton/Silverdale area boasts 118 of them.

They’re not Starbucks stores; they’re geocaches. A geocache can take several different forms, but the simplest is a small container with a logbook and some trinkets. That doesn’t sound like much, but they are hidden all over, in parks, along roads and walking trails, places where only someone looking for them will find them.

Finding them, that’s the part where the fun and the navigation come in. The location for every geocache is available to the public on http://www.geocaching.com{{PERIOD}} To hunt down an elusive geocache all you need to do is visit the Web site and plug the coordinates into a GPS unit.

GPS, short for global positioning system, can tell you where you are anywhere in the world and can point you to any spot you want to go to. The units are popular with hunters, fishermen, outdoor enthusiasts and others who just like electronic toys.

If you already own a GPS, geocaching is a great way to see how well you can really use it or a nice refresher to knock some cobwebs off your skills if you haven’t been out in a while.

It doesn’t sound like much of a challenge does it? Don’t let it fool you, you can make it as difficult as you like. Once you get to the right spot, you still have to find the cache and that can be frustrating some times. Then again, just getting to the right spot can be tough. I visited one this weekend that required only a short hike, but the last 20 feet was completely vertical—scrambling up a rope to the entrance of a cave.

Each cache is rated on a 1-5 scale for difficulty (how well it is hidden) and terrain (how hard it is to get to.) Some caches even let you know if they are friendly for kids or dogs. Children especially enjoy the thrill of finding their own small hidden treasure.

Once you find a cache, you get to take one of the trinkets that are in the cache and leave one of your own, finally, sign the logbook and hide the cache back in its spot.

One of the great things about geocaching is that it can lead you to places in your own town that you might have never visited or never even knew was there. If you’re new to an area, you’ll learn your way around faster.

The best thing about geocaching though is once you get the bug; you can hunt geocaches almost anywhere in the world. Good hunting.