CEBU, Philippines – It was in 1984, when I joined my sister, Ivy, in Pennsylvania. I left my wife and five children in the Philippines. My early years in the United States were focused on making money to support my family back home. Although I wanted to go around the United States to get to know my new home, I had to concentrate on earning to support my family back in the Philippines.
The plan was for my family to follow me in the U.S. So even before my family arrived in Minnesota where I relocated, I prepared a house for them and bought cars for each child who could already drive. I even had a boat that we could use in family fishing trips since Minnesota is also known as the land of 10,000 lakes!
The dream of visiting US tourist destinations was again shelved.
Soon, the kids started to lead independent lives - Duane joined the US Marines and Jezrel, the US Navy. Their mother had since passed away. There is no fun travelling alone so, once again, the dream to travel was deferred until I met my fiancée. Being a great world traveller, she initiated me to travelling, starting with a visit to Mt. Rushmore.
So on April 20, 2009, the day after I celebrated my birthday with friends and family, we started the journey to Mt. Rushmore. Packed with caldereta, paklay, adobo, leche flan and fruit salad, our ever dependable “Town and Country” van took me and my fiancée on a 10 hour- trip to South Dakota.
We stayed at Holiday Inn and our room had a Jacuzzi, perfect relief for the tiring trip. Keystone is a sleepy town in spring because the heavy volume of tourists comes in summer.
Driving up towards Mt. Rushmore was filled with anticipation. When the monument came into view, I was overwhelmed with emotion. It was awe-inspiring and I was puzzled why it took me a quarter of a century of living in the United States before I commit this view to memory.
Nestled in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Mt. Rushmore is an imposing sight made even more magnificent by the monument of four presidents of the United States namely: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
A brief lecture about the Memorial was given. The sculptor, Borglum selected Mount Rushmore as the site for several reasons - the rock of the mountain is composed of smooth, fine-grained granite, the durable granite erodes only 1 inch (25 mm) every 10,000 years, indicating that it was sturdy enough to support sculpting, and, it was the tallest mountain in the region, 5,725 feet or 1,745 meters above sea level.
Work on the colossal 60 ft. sculpture of the four US presidents started in October 04, 1927 and ended in October 31, 1941 with 400 workers relentlessly carving the four faces of the presidents mentioned. Since then, it has attracted a lot of tourists from all over the world. The tourists come not only to view Mt. Rushmore but also to sample a part of the history of the United States.