Geocaching, a technology-driven treasure hunt, is gaining popularity worldwide. As of Sept. 1, there were 196,414 active treasure sites (caches) in 217 countries. The number of sites grows by the hundreds daily.

Caches can be found in such faraway places as Kabul, Afghanistan; Moscow, Russia, even Antarctica. And they are as close as neighborhood parks here in Willow Glen.

Geocaching (pronounced "geo-cashing") is not about the treasure, says one local geocacher. It's about the hunt.

"When you're on the hunt, you forget everything, including the fact that you're hiking," Willow Glen resident Rebecca Turner says. "The only thing on one's mind is the thrill of the find."

Geocachers carry on their search with the help of www.geocaching.com and a GPS (global positioning systems) unit, which costs around $100. Coordinates for every registered cache are listed on the website and can be downloaded to GPS units. These handheld devices give directions to a specific destination.

GPS send signals through satellites and receiving devices to compute positions, or coordinates, on Earth.

Turner's husband, Erik Soule, says his GPS unit gets him to the site without a problem. He has a Palm Pilot that has both the coordinates and a compass that allows him to know exactly how close he is. Using the Palm Pilot gives him a database that allows spontaneity.

"It's convenient having access to 500 caches at once," he says. "So if we have some time to kill, say between errands or when the kids are getting cranky, we can look up the closest cache to our location and say, 'Hey kids, let's go find the nearest cache,' and we're off and running."

Campbell resident Betsy Fessler says her GPS unit can get her within 20 feet of the coordinates. After that, she says, it's about instinct, determination and a little bit of luck.

The Q & A section at www.geocaching.com says "[Geocaching is] deceptively easy. It's one thing to see where an item is; it's a totally different story to actually get there." The website is recognized as the official site of geocaching worldwide.

"Sometimes you get stumped," Soule says.

That's why the website offers treasure hunters two ratings--one on how hard the cache is to find and one on how difficult the terrain is. Both ratings give a 1-to-5 scale, with 5 being the most difficult.

There are also hints, but they're not supposed to be explicit enough to be what geocachers call "spoilers."

Some of the more obvious caches are found and logged upward of 100 times. "Some of them are like puzzles and are hard to find," Soule says.

He says others definitely require hiking for days through rough terrain or mountain climbing.

"Some are pretty creative," he says. A favorite cache that Soule and Turner found is a series of caches along the VTA light rail.

"You have to find each cache in order to get clues for the following ones," Turner says. "It's nice because it's set up so that you don't have to leave the light rail cars--each site leads to the next."

Geocaching is also fun while on a vacation, Turner adds.

First treasure hunt

Soule and Turner's first geocaching experience came when they were visiting Soule's 94-year-old grandfather in North Carolina.

"It was in a cemetery in Huntersville, North Carolina, up in the Smokey Mountains," Soule says. "The cache was in this rural cemetery and the GPS coordinates pointed you to the older part of the cemetery, which was unkempt and had unmarked tombstones. There were some tombstones dating back to the Civil War era."

Turner and Soule also hid their first cache in North Carolina.

"When you start a cache you are supposed to log it on the website and have it approved," Turner says. "We didn't know that and someone wrote to us and said that if we aren't there to check on it, it is considered trash. So our cache is trash."

Novices to geocaching, Soule and Turner returned to Willow Glen curious about caches in their neighborhood.

"We found many caches, some in places we walk by all the time," Soule says.

Most the neighborhood parks have them, as do parking lots and other interesting spots, he says.

"Recently, I went to Wallenberg Park," Soule says. "The description said the cache was near a bird cage. Now I've been to this park many times and not once have I seen a bird cage," he says. "But if you go toward the Meridian side of the park, in someone's backyard there is a bird cage the size of my kitchen filled with exotic birds."

Closer to home

On Labor Day, Turner and her family took advantage of the weather and downloaded the coordinates of three caches in Willow Glen. Her in-laws, who were in town, joined the hunt.

The first cache, called "Grab a Cache and Maybe a Bite to Eat - Willow Glen," is located at coordinates N 37deg 18.283 W 121deg 54.002. Account holder bykenut, who placed the cache, mentions in the hint column that it is an easy urban hide with many eating establishments nearby. Soule finds the cache quickly.

It's a small Tupperware container with a black lid. Inside, there's a small logbook to sign, various toys, pens and key chains.

The couple's small daughter, Madison Soule, takes an Oracle pen out and replaces it with a Lego toy.

Aside from treasures, there's a log in most caches where geocachers can write their username, the date and what they left and took from the cache, if anything.

Some geocachers don't trade treasures, preferring just to find the cache and sign the log.

The second cache the family attempts to find, "Cache Cove," is located N 37deg 18.644 W 121deg 53.749. Account holders Marky & Joani described the cache as located on an old railway; it is small, magnetic and resembles a screw.

The family reaches the location without difficulty. The GPS takes them to the front of the shopping complex where there are railroad tracks in stacks.

After scouring the area for more than 20 minutes, the family is ready to give up when they find the miniature cache.

"This is probably the smallest cache we've found," Soule says.

Urban caches are smaller and blend in with urban surroundings such as concrete and metal.

"Micros can defeat you easily," Fessler says. "They're pretty hard."

The cache, the size of a thumbnail, unscrews and inside is a long strip of paper with names of previous geocachers. Soule and Turner are the 14th since May 2005 to have found the cache.

A man with a cell phone walking by ogles the family. Turner says geocachers call oglers "muggles."

"When uncovering a cache, we're supposed to be secretive," Soule says. "Otherwise, non-geocachers will see it and may disturb the cache."

Besides being well hidden, the areas around the caches are usually cleaner than the surroundings.

The acronym CITO on geocaching.com stands for "cache in, trash out," and it asks all geocachers to pick up trash and limit their impact on the natural environment.

"The unwritten rule is that those hiding caches don't promote the tromping of natural environments," Cupertino resident Steve Bernstein says.

Bernstein says his love for hiking led him to geocaching. He used to design trail maps that could be downloaded to GPS units for geocachers who were also interested in hiking.

"Geocaching is a great way to get kids interested in hiking," he says. "It makes it fun for them."

San Jose resident Steve Wood is a long-time geocacher. He teaches GPS navigation classes as well as geocaching at all REI Bay Area locations.

"It's an interesting sport because it appeals to all ages and all types of people," Wood says. "There's an element for the outdoors person as well as elements for the computer geek."

Woods says there are more than 7,000 caches in Silicon Valley alone.

"San Jose is a hotbed for caches and some of the top ranked geocachers live here," he says.

Meanwhile, Soule and his family is on its third cache, "Rails to Trails #1," and it proves to be difficult. The family searches in bushes along chain-linked fences and again through old railroad tracks.

Soule checks the hints with his Palm Pilot and sees 'look down' and notes that the cache is magnetic. Soule also reads other cachers' comments and learns they had difficulty with this cache as well.

After much time spent digging and searching, the family announces the cache to be DNF--did not find.

Origins of geocaching

According to geocaching.com, this high-tech hunting began in 2000 when President Clinton signed an order that made Global Positioning Systems available to the public. After that, a man hid a container of goodies near Portland, Ore. The first person to find it, Mike Teague, built a personal webpage to document his find. Later that year, Jeremy Irish approached Teague about developing a new website and the activity was named geocaching. The website has since taken on a life of its own.

And so has geocaching, with some variations.

For instance, there are travel bugs in some caches. These items are registered on the website and picked up by cachers and carried to new sites. The item becomes a "hitchhiker" carried from cache to cache, in some cases around the world. Each bug has an online diary, and geocachers sometimes submit pictures of the bug's travels.

Some bugs actually have missions.

Fessler says her brother wanted his travel bug to visit as many racetracks as possible on the NASCAR circuit. His bug made it to Daytona Raceway in Florida for the Pepsi 400, and its picture was taken on the dashboard of a truck that drove on the track.

Geocaching can be done on many levels, Fessler says. Anyone can do it, from novices to weekenders to hardcore cachers. But, Fessler warns, don't expect caches to be easy finds.

"People are getting pretty creative with this stuff these days."

For more information on geocaching, visit www.geocaching.com. Registration is free.

Lee Gordon contributed to this story.