When this challenge was announced by GC.com my attention was raised somewhat higher than usual over the previous ones.  This one appealed to me on the level of a cosmological enthusiast as well as having not completed a challenge in its entirety since the 31 Days of Geocaching back in August 2013.

The nature of my work allows opportunities to geocache in several countries, but at the same time sometimes it doesn’t leave much time to do it.  As a long-haul freight pilot, I work a somewhat irregular schedule which usually involves lots of late nights and daytime snoozing. 

The Planetary Pursuit would prove to be a challenge indeed…

My journey started in Johannesburg where I live.  To get a small head start before flying back to work in Japan, I tried to incorporate some geocaching during some last-minute errands, and I found four geocaches in a morning.  These would prove to be the last South African geocaches I would find during the Planetary Pursuit.

My first stop was Narita in Japan, about an hour’s drive outside downtown Tokyo.  Luckily for me there is the Inbanuma Pond- the biggest lake in Chiba Prefecture- with a cycling track all around it.  I have geocached here many times before, and it has always been my ‘go-to’ geocaching spot due to many geocaches placed in a power trail fashion. 

In true power trail fashion though, the caches around the Inbanuma Pond are small and quite unremarkable- with none to very few favourite points, necessitating the need to find a lot to get anywhere beyond the Inner Planet souvenirs. 

Travelling east took me to Anchorage, Alaska, an area renowned for the great outdoors, something that we all know goes hand in hand with geocaching.  Except at this time of year, the whole state is snowed under and is very cold - temperatures dipped to -16° on some days I visited.  I still was able to find some caches though: those that weren’t buried by the snow.

A brief stop in Chicago yielded one quick cache, before I set off still eastwards to Germany.

The small double town of Traben-Trarbach along the Mosel River is a quintessential German village - quaint with beautiful scenery, churches, rolling hills with Riesling vines and castle ruins.  I was fortunate to spend several days here and got to explore the area by foot, finding several wonderfully thought out and well placed geocaches. 

Spending some idle time in Germany had me planning the rest of my Planetary Pursuit journey.  I had an upcoming trip to Seattle and I started planning a trip to two meccas - the Boeing factory and to Geocaching HQ.  But things were looking tight - I started a tally of how many and what kind of caches I had to find in order to reach Pluto and become a Space Explorer on a high note - finding the cache at Geocaching HQ.

Onward - and back to Japan briefly.  And then, something strange happened…

How can you find two different caches over 5000kms apart on the same day, and find the second one before the first one?  Time travel?  Not as difficult as you would think - you just have to cross the International Date Line.  Often, we takeoff from Tokyo in the evening and land a few hours later ‘before’ we left, in the morning of the same calendar day in Anchorage.  Confusing for the body, confusing for logging geocaches!

After find caches in Japan, Anchorage and Chicago again, I arrived in Seattle, hoping to complete my journey which by this stage had become fairly tiring.

After an amazing visit to the Boeing factory in Everett to see how the aeroplanes I fly are made, I found myself in Fremont where GC.com is headquartered.  According to my tally I had to find two caches worth 15 points, drop six TBs and then log the geocache at GC HQ to become a Space Explorer.  Fortunately, I was able to find two such caches nearby that were part of a geo-tour, picking up some TB’s along the way.

I arrived at the Lily Pad and was greeted by one of the Lackeys, who showed me around the visitor’s center.  After discovering some rare trackables and having my photo taken with Signal, I found the geocache at GC HQ, dropped some TB’s and filled out the two logbooks- one for a written log and one for your photo with Signal.

Sitting down, I logged onto GC.com to log my finds for the day…

Mercury through to Pluto by exploring our own planet, Earth.
Here are some statistics from my journey:
Geocaches found:
Traditionals: 62
Mysteries: 4 (incl. Geocaching HQ)
Multi: 1
Total Caches: 67

Cache-to-Cache distance: 63926,86km
Maximum distance in one day: 5545km (12 caches)
Countries visited: 4 (South Africa, Japan, Germany, USA)Article submitted by Halty

After hearing about this amazing adventure finding all the planetary souvenirs, are you ready for Geocaching HQ's next challenge? Recently, 13 sightings of magical creatures and otherworldly beings have been reported. Embark on a global adventure to try to witness these mythical creatures in their unique habitats. From June 27 through July 25, earn up to 13 mythical creature souvenirs by finding geocaches and attending events.

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The next big event planned is the 2018 Jolly Jozi Jol, GC7DAJM. We are trying to get this one Mega status, which needs 500 will attends to achieve that. If you will be in Gauteng on 29 September and will be joining us for the event, please log your will attend now so we can get this event up to Mega status.  At date of publishing we are already up to 465 WILL ATTENDS, so are almost there. Please check your calendar and book the weekend now.

This month's theme was Best Field Puzzle, and we got some fantastic nominations.  All the field puzzles sounded very impressive, but our winner this month is very innovative and unique, even requiring some musical skills to get the container open, and had multiple nominations. 

The Cache of the Month for June 2018 is GC69XG7 Puzzle Containers 6 - Nursery Rhymes which is one of a series of field puzzle containers by jtomcat16, and this one has a awesome 93% favourite point ratio.Next month's COTM will be the best Golden Oldie - a geocache that is older than 10 years old (placed between 2001 and 2008). From August we will not have a specific theme but general COTMs again. Please send your nominations to .