Easter Egg Hunt Not for Kids Only

Joseph G. Garcia proudly held up his yellow plastic bag holding the plastic, treasure-filled eggs he found at Dundalk's Mega Egga Hunt at Heritage Park.

He flashed a big smile and said it was the first Easter egg hunt he had participated in for quite a few years.

Decades, in fact.

Garcia, 59, was one of more than 100 adults who participated in Saturday's event, much to the chagrin of most of their young children.

Kerihgan Fulton, 12, said it was "embarrassing but cool" that her 42-year-old father, Bill Fulton, was stretching and jumping up and down at the starting line of the adult hunt.

But that wasn't the case with Garcia. His 33-year-old daughter, Vickie Snyder, signed him up, handed him the yellow bag and said. "You're going hunting!"

"I've never seen a group of adults so happy to get some plastic eggs with candy in them," volunteer Abbey Niland said after the adults made short work of their egg hunt.

Saturday's event, sponsored by the Dundalk-Eastfield Recreation and Parks Council, Lifepointe Church and Dunmanway Apartments, was attended by hundreds of children and adults and included six separate hunts for ages 0-99, according to an event notice.

The gathering, which included crafts, face painting, free food and a visit from the Easter Bunny, lasted about 90 minutes.

But it took each less than a minute for hunters to gather the eggs hidden for each individual age group.

"I'm thrilled with the crowd, but next year we're going to hide 10,000 eggs," event organizer Angel Ball said shortly before she gave the ready-set-go for the adult egg hunt.

The second annual hunt was not without its bumps. Ball said organizers were a little surprised by the number of children in the 0-4 age group, and said she's already made plans to split that group up next year.

"They were our biggest group, it was crazy," she said.

Hunters found 6,000 colorful plastic eggs filled with candy and special prizes.

Fulton, who found a gift certificate for Mustang Pizza in one of his eggs, joked that he thought it was for a 1995 Ford Mustang.

"Little bit of a difference there between the car and pizza," he said with a laugh.