In late-July 2014, my travels took me to beautiful Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for some relaxing vacation time and a chance to visit good friends and family. Lake Geneva is a beautiful spot that is only about a 90 minute drive from O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The lake is surrounded by beautiful homes with stunning yards that go right down to the lake. Each of the lakefront properties is required to maintain a walking path that allows anyone to walk along the shore without any obstructions and the path extends all the way around the lake. The result is a roughly 21 mile trail that is perfectly maintained and open to the public. Unfortunately, I was not able to walk the entire distance around the lake, but walking along the shores of Lake Geneva I covered has to rank among the most spectacular walks I have ever taken.

It was also nice to take a trip where I did not have to attend a meeting or give a talk. This allowed me plenty of time to be physically active and enjoy walking and swimming. I spent time with my wife Kathy, some family and my good friends Bob and Linda Murray. The weather was perfect and we took advantage of it by packing in long walks, swimming and water skiing each day. In my opinion there is nothing better to re-charge your batteries than a vacation in which you are physically active and enjoying beautiful scenery. And walking allows you to really explore a new spot in a much deeper way than any other form of sight-seeing. This is why I try to carve out as much time to walk as possible on every trip I take.

And don’t forget about the tremendous health benefits that walking brings as well. For that reason, the US Physical Activity Guidelines recommend all adults get 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise, like a brisk walk. However, as little as 10-15 minutes per day has been shown to bring significant health benefits in terms of preventing and treating chronic disease and or lowering your risk for mortality. So I recommend you seize every opportunity you have to get out and walk. If we could only convince everyone in America to take a walk each day it would improve the health of this country more than any other medical intervention we could deliver.

So thanks for reading this blog and helping to spread the word about Every Body Walk! I think we are having an impact and can improve the health of Americans one walk at a time.

Keep walking my friends!

Bob