CAMAS — It took dozens of people hours to stuff and place the Easter eggs around Camas’ Crown Park, along with weeks of prep work ahead of time.
And how long does it take the hundreds of children at the city’s annual Easter egg hunt to pick the park clean?
“Less than five minutes,” said Cassidy Hines of the Camas Parks and Recreation Department, one of the organizers.
A couple of thousand people showed up at the park Sunday afternoon. The hunt, in its 28th year, requires a few days to set up, not including the preparation earlier in the year.
Local Boy Scouts and students at the Washington State School for the Blind stuffed more than 10,000 eggs in a couple of hours. There were more than more than 14,000 eggs set out at the park, Hines said, all split by age group into different search areas.
If you’ve ever seen insects swarm, watching the kids descend on the eggs is kind of like that, she said.
“The kids seem to love it. … I think the parents just think it’s hilarious,” she said. “Once we say ‘Go,’ it’s pretty crazy.”
Chris and Erica Herington came with their 9-year-old, Jack, and 6-year-old, Molly.
It was the family’s first year at the annual hunt, and the two kids said they had a good haul.
Erica Herington said she’d been working in Camas for some time, but the family only moved there in June. They brought the kids to a public Easter egg event, one in Sun River, Ore., two years ago, but it’s dwarfed by Camas’ event, Erica said.
“Nothing quite as big as this,” Chris Herington said. “In less than a minute, it was completely wiped out.”
Vancouver’s Jake Lathim was watching his 23-month-old son, Jaxon, pick through his basket shortly after the hunt.
They were a bit late, but Jaxon found some reused eggs taken from the discard bins set up for popped eggs, and was admiring his pile of loot.
“They were all picked up by the time we got here, but he doesn’t know the difference,” Lathim said. “He thinks he’s winning.”
It was Jaxon’s first formal Easter event, Lathim said.
“I think we might make this a tradition.”
