Go West, Mr. President, to America's wilderness

President Barack Obama is hardly the consummate Western outdoorsman. The Marlboro Man he's not. He's spent his adult life in big cities — New York, Chicago and, now, Washington. Basketball, golf, and bodysurfing are how this jock rolls. Indoor daily gym workouts are the norm. Hunting, climbing, rafting — not so much. Yet there he was on a summer weekend, enthusiastically soaking in America's vast wilderness. He toured Yellowstone National Park, checking out Old Faithful. He strolled trails along the Grand Canyon's rim. He cast a fly while fishing in a Montana river and spent a night in a mountainside lodge. "Pretty nice, eh," Obama said Sunday as the family took in the breathtaking view from the Grand Canyon's Hopi Point under a magnificent blue sky and overlooking a 5,000-foot drop to the Colorado River. "Last time I was here was when I was 11 years old." Asked by a ranger if it looked the same, he said, "It does!" Obama, aides say, had pressed them for a while to schedule a parks trip. The last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, often vacationed in the West; his pollster used surveys to decide the best place for him to spend his leisure time, politically. As Obama tended to presidential duties this weekend, his wife and daughters spent 90 minutes whitewater rafting in rain and, at times, hail in Montana and went peach-picking in Colorado, bringing some back for travelers on Air Force One...AP