Egg Hunt Breaks Par for the Course

Toting baskets or buckets, or grasping a parent’s hand, children scampered across rolling greens Sunday afternoon in a massive egg hunt at Sherman Oaks Castle Park.

With more than 2,000 eggs--and more than 1,000 kids and their families--this year’s Easter festival was bigger than ever, said Mario Jean Philippe, who as assistant facility manager for the city-owned park on Sepulveda Boulevard has helped organize the activity for the last decade.

Though the plastic eggs scattered over the park’s miniature golf course were not exactly hidden, that didn’t seem to make the search any easier for the tiniest treasure hunters.

Hiking up her Easter dress as she stepped gingerly among blue, purple, pink, orange and yellow eggs, 5-year-old Abigail Vargas looked anxiously this way and that, unable to find an egg with the color--gold--she most wanted.

Nearby, 5-year-old Geovanni Alvarez bent over a big cache in plain view and then suddenly popped up again. “Oh my aching back!” grimaced the Mission Hills boy. But he persevered and scooped up several eggs for himself and his 18-month-old brother, Christopher.

“He doesn’t know what to do. He just sits there,” said Geovanni as he handed an egg to his brother. The toddler promptly dropped it.

Elsewhere in the park, children rode ponies, watched puppet shows and emerged giggling from face-painting booths. Clowns, jugglers and stilt-walkers also kept the crowds entertained.

Inside a giant inflated castle, Eric McClain, an 8-year-old from Las Vegas, jumped up and down and turned somersaults.

“It’s like you’re in a popcorn machine,” said Britney Glendinning, 9, falling to her knees when another girl bounced into her.