Lawrence resident Larry Woydziak has bowled in every county in Kansas that has a bowling alley.

He’s bowled in the basement of a recreation center in Wilson, the Czech capital of Kansas, two floors below the town’s roller-skating rink.

He’s eaten homemade pies at a bowling alley in Stafford.

He’s watched a mother in Hiawatha hand off her baby, without a word, to the bowling alley’s manager so she could bowl a frame.

In all, he’s bowled in 79 of the state’s 105 counties. The rest don’t have bowling lanes.

Why has he done this? Well, why not?

To Woydziak (pronounced WAY-jack), exploring Kansas is a goal in and of itself.

“I enjoy traveling around Kansas. It’s quite simple,” said Woydziak, 51, a former Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical captain. “What I learned is that folks are good. People are all right. Kansas is a good place to live.”

Inman resident Marci Penner wishes more people took Woydziak’s approach to living here. Penner is director of the Kansas Explorers Club, a group that began in 1994 and now has about 1,700 active members.

Match the letter of each city on the map of Kansas to the list of cities where Larry Woydziak has bowled. Answers.

In all, about 4,500 people have signed up at one point to become Explorers, even if all haven’t renewed their memberships. Penner’s goal is to reach 5,000 – a number she sees as a possible turning point in people’s opinions about the state.

“For me, the tipping point is when, rather than having Kansans say, ‘Our state is dull, flat and boring, nothing to do,’ the majority of Kansans start to believe they have something here,” she said.

The club’s newsletter, issued six times per year, lists tidbits about members’ travels and about points of interest around the state, such as where to get good chicken-fried steak prepared in a pan, not deep-fried.

A recent newsletter urged people to buy stamps from the post office in Morrill (pop. 260) in Brown County, which is at risk of closing.

“Even if there’s no purchase made in a town by an Explorer, just to have the interest, the visit, that goes a long way to boost morale in a small town,” Penner said.

Lawrence resident Barbara Downing recently joined the Explorers club after taking a continuing-education class about Kansas through Kansas University. Downing said she didn’t think enough people took time to appreciate what’s out there in Kansas – the big skies, friendly people and small shops.

“People are so into electronic stuff that getting out in the car and going to look at hills doesn’t seem to be interesting,” she said.

Woydziak started his tour of Kansas bowling alleys in 1999 and finished it in 2001. He got the idea in 1990, when he and a friend drove around the edges of the state, visiting the courthouse in every border county in Kansas.

The bowling alleys he saw on the roadside captured his interest – partly because many were closed, and he wondered if they were at risk of disappearing.

His rules for the quest were that he had to bowl at the smallest bowling alley in each county and that he would bowl only one game before moving on. He took along a bowling bag that he’d bought for $1.95 at a thrift store, but he used a house ball and house shoes everywhere he went.

He called ahead before visits – in part to make sure the alleys would be open. In some places, he was the only person in the bowling alley besides the manager. In other towns, city leaders and reporters showed up to meet him.

The catch about the whole tour is that Woydziak isn’t that great a bowler. He’s just as likely to throw a gutter ball as a strike. He says he had plenty of double-digit games along the way.

“Bowling wasn’t the point, not even remotely,” he said. “The point was to get out and see Kansas.”

He said the thing that impressed him most on his travels through Kansas was how people look out for each other. In Coldwater, he watched a drug-store clerk fill out a check and record it in the ledger for an elderly woman who was picking up a prescription.

These days, Woydziak doesn’t do much bowling, but he still gets around this part of the state in his job as a book courier for the Northeast Kansas Library System. One of these days, though, he may be headed west to Pottawatomie County – a place he didn’t see on his first tour.

“I think they put four lanes in Wamego,” he said.

Information about the Kansas Explorers Club is available online at www.explorekansas.org or by writing the Kansas Sampler Foundation, 978 Arapaho Road, Inman, KS 67546.