CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK, N.M. — As his professional and parental duties approach a new phase, President Barack Obama is taking a family vacation this weekend to the caverns here and to Yosemite National Park, echoing a similar trip he took seven years ago when his daughters were smaller and his hair not nearly so gray.
The first family headed out a week after the Obamas’ elder daughter, Malia, 17, graduated from high school. Obama has said many times that Malia’s looming departure — she has been accepted by Harvard but will take a gap year first — is causing him great emotional turmoil, and during the graduation ceremony June 10 he wept behind dark sunglasses.
The family spent about two hours at Carlsbad Caverns on Friday before flying to California, where they will remain until the afternoon Sunday, which is Father’s Day. Most of the weekend is devoted to family time.
At the caverns, which were closed for the Obamas’ visit, the family took an elevator down 754 feet. They toured the Big Room, the fifth-largest natural limestone chamber in the world, which maintains a year-round temperature of 56 degrees.
Barack and Michelle Obama asked their guide questions, but Malia and her sister, Sasha, were quiet, at least while they were near reporters.
“How cool is this?” Obama asked the reporters with the enthusiasm of a father trying to encourage similar excitement in his children. “Spectacular.”
In August 2009, the Obamas took their daughters to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon. Pictures from the trip show two cute little girls; now, Malia is about as tall as her father, and Sasha is not far behind.
Obama was criticized for taking a vacation during the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression. But administration officials said at the time that part of the reason for the trip was to draw attention and lure tourists to the national park system.
This time, the family vacation came days after the massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Administration officials said the trip was intended in part to highlight the extraordinary economic benefits of national parks in their centennial year. In 2015, more than 305 million people visited U.S. national parks, a record, and spent an estimated $16.9 billion in nearby communities, according to the White House.
The weekend park visits will become part of Obama’s legacy on conservation. He has given protected status to more land and water combined than any of his predecessors, and while much of that comes from his additions to a huge marine monument in the Pacific Ocean near his native Hawaii, he trails only President Jimmy Carter in the number of acres of public lands that his administration has protected.
Obama’s designations have largely come under the Antiquities Act, a 110-year-old law that allows presidents on their own to declare places to be monuments. Such declarations sometimes infuriate local residents and conservatives who oppose federal ownership of vast stretches of land.
The president is considering protecting more land, including a possible designation of monument status to 1.9 million acres in southeastern Utah that are sacred to at least five Native American tribes.
“What he has done for conservation is good, but what he does next will determine whether his legacy is remembered as great,” said Sharon Buccino, director of the land and wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.