RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — It is perhaps appropriate that President Obama is vacationing this weekend in California, where the state flag features a roaming grizzly.
The restless president, who has compared himself to a caged animal on recent wanderings by declaring the ‘‘bear is loose,’’ took a long Father’s Day weekend away with his wife and older daughter.
The visit to the desert resort area of Palm Springs is one of the ways Obama has been trying to escape during his sixth year cloistered in the White House.
In California, Obama has worked out mornings at a gym near the Rancho Mirage home where the first family is staying with White House decorator Michael Smith and his partner, James Costos, the American ambassador to Spain. Despite temperatures above 100 degrees, Obama was able to golf at two nearby courses — Saturday at the Sunnylands estate and Sunday at the Porcupine Creek Estate owned by software billionaire Larry Ellison.
Obama interspersed his four-day weekend with official duties, including Democratic Party fund-raising, a speech on climate change, and calls to his national security adviser discussing military options to stop a violent insurgency in Iraq.