[Ruby] is there a conf dir mechanism for a gem?

[Mike Mondragon]

I looked through the manuals on rubygems.org and my PickAxe book and
couldn't find a specific answer to this question.

I'm building a gem that will ship with some yaml based config files.
The config files hold strings that will be consumed by a Regexp.   I
want users to be be able to modify and/or add strings to the
configuration at its installation point after this gem is installed if
they so choose.

Is it possible for the gem to programmatically know where its
installation is located at (environment variable, helper class, etc.)?
 If there is then I'll be able to load the default config yaml in a
relative manner.

If there is a specific "gem"-way to install and load default
configurations specific to the gem then please educate me about it.

Thanks
Mike