Nicole Dial shares a fun way to get out and explore the world around you and feel like a modern day pirate.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a burning to desire to be a treasure hunter. Maybe it was all the Indiana Jones movies as a kid and a love of pirates and plunderers. And luckily enough, there is a game for all us modern would be explorers: geocaching.  Basically, all you need is a love of adventure, a GPS and a waterfowl hunting backpack. Plug in the coordinates of a cache and get out there and start searching. The coordinates don’t tell you exactly where it is. That’s left to you.

Once you’ve discovered the hidden cache, look inside. There might be all sorts of weird and unusual treasures hidden inside like objects left by previous geocachers or maybe even a travel bug. Travel bugs are like geocache dog tags which move around from geocache to geocache. Everyone is encouraged to hide their own cache and contribute things to other caches. You can hide them and find geocaches anywhere in the world, even in Antarctica! Everything you need to know about rules and anything else is outlined here.

For all those without a GPS, there is another version of this game called Letterboxing. In letterboxing, a box is hidden with a notebook inside and there are clues (and sometimes outright directions) to the location where the box is hidden, all you need are the clues and a compass. Upon finding the letterbox, people make their mark by leaving stamps in the notebook.

So get coordinates and clues and get hunting!

Nicole Dial is a freelance writer and photographer by night and a starving artist by day. You can follow her on twitter at @nicolemdial.