EDGARTOWN: President Barack Obama and his family spent the day at the beach on Saturday, as their summer vacation at the posh Massachusetts island of Martha`s Vineyard drew to a close.

The first family left their rental farm in the late morning and headed to a private beach in Edgardtown, leaving six hours later, according to journalists accompanying the US president in his travels.

It was the First Couple`s last full day on Martha`s Vineyard, where they arrived on August 19 with their daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9.

Obama and his wife Michelle are due to travel early Sunday for New Orleans to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the trail of death and destruction it left in its wake.

During his retreat away from Washington politics, Obama played golf five times -- once with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- and ate out four times.

But four consecutive days of rain clouded the presidential vacation and Obama`s hopes for more outdoor activities.

Obama returns to Washington on Sunday to gear up for a particularly busy week.

On Tuesday, he is due to deliver a nationally televised Oval Office address on Iraq to mark the end of the US combat mission there after visiting troops at Fort Bliss, a US Army base in Texas.

US troop levels now stand below 50,000 -- less than a third of the peak figure of around 170,000 during the US military "surge" of 2007, when Iraq was in the midst of a brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian war that cost thousands of lives.

On Wednesday, Obama will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on the eve of the resumption of direct talks between the two leaders for the first time in 20 months.

On the domestic front, Obama`s return to the US capital will be dominated by economic worries, amid signs of a slowing recovery just two months before crucial mid-term elections in which the president`s Democratic allies could lose control of Congress.

BDST: 0932 HRS, August 29, 2010