Cape Region celebrates hope, optimism

From hundreds of kites flying high to toddlers in the grass scrambling for hundreds of eggs, the Cape Region offered plenty of fun during the long holiday weekend – and once the sun came out, even the weather cooperated.

For 50 years, children and adults have turned out for the Great Delaware Kite Festival, and while rain threatened to drown out this year's fun, kite-lovers would not be denied. As they have for decades, many participants brought handmade kites, from the simplest to the most brilliantly colorful and complex, and as the weather cleared, the kites soared.

Celebrating the tiniest micro-kites as well as balletic stunt kites and high-flying kites, the festival has for years inspired enthusiasts of all ages.

This year, 8-month-old Bruce Leister of Camden was the youngest competitor, while 11-month-old Novalee Coleman, a fifth-generation kite flyer, was spotted with two medals around her neck.

Kites eventually gave way to an egg hunt, an activity joyously repeated at numerous locations on Saturday.

Anyone out early Saturday morning could catch a brilliant moon in the western sky, the last blue moon of the year, and watch it gently fade as the sun rose in the east. Whether it was flying kites, hunting for eggs, hiking, running or cycling on one of our region's trails, or quietly strolling our beaches, marsh and boardwalks, for anyone in the Cape Region, this was a weekend brimming with high spirits and optimism.

We live in times that are fraught with conflict, facing many issues at the local as well as the state and national levels on which people are so set and so divided it's easy to think there is no longer anything that can bring us together.

Despite all that divides us, watching the joy of children flying their kites in the brisk spring breeze, or seeing their keen-eyed determination as they raced to collect eggs, this weekend in the Cape Region was one brimming with hope and the promise of brighter days ahead.