The size of the Solar System has been scaled down to fit within the borders of Maryland, and the individual ‘planet’ caches have been spaced out accordingly. The scale is 1 Astronomical Unit (average distance between Earth and the Sun, or 93,000,000 miles) equivalent to 3.5 miles. The tour starts with the Sun cache. If you do the complete tour, mark the cache locations on a map of Maryland and see just how vast the Solar System really is. This will hopefully give you a feel for why it takes so long for spacecraft to travel from Earth to anywhere in our Solar System.
The Earth is an amazing place. If you just look around you, where ever you go, you can see a variety of change: be it geological, biological, or meteorological. Or a combination of all three. Despite the fairly large number of planets that are in this Solar System, only Earth has the widest range of environmental change that we know of (probably why so many science fiction shows depict other worlds as having only one type of environment). How many other planets have ice caps and tropical forests and deserts and oceans? And let’s not even start talking about the diverse variety of life that exists on this planet (not only the ones we know about, but even the ones we have yet to discover!). Earth is really a not boring place. Take some time to appreciate it whenever you can.
This microcache is in a small 4-3/4 inch long plastic tube, green to represent the Earth, secured to a tree to prevent it from easily walking away. This micro is too small to host its own pen, so be sure to bring one of your own.