Wichita ? Abner Perney will stick his feet in every fishing lake. Lee Addis will walk down every Main Street. Elaine Miller will snap a shot of every county courthouse. And Vera Mann will slurp a limeade in every single soda shop.

They have different missions, but each of these dedicated Kansas “questers” shares the same inspirations – a man who bowled a game in every Kansas bowling alley, a man who ate a burger in every Kansas county and a deep, abiding love for their home state.

Questing, as it’s become known in recent years, is a popular new pastime for members of the Kansas Explorers Club – a group of 2,000 Kansans whose passion is traversing the state just for the fun of it.

Quests can start with any goal that will take someone over Kansas – like quilter Debbie Divine’s plan to purchase a piece of fabric in every county.

The quest isn’t the point as much as the journey and the chance to explore parts of the state they might never visit otherwise.

‘Rural cultural ambassadors

“I call them ‘rural cultural ambassadors,”‘ said Marci Penner, who leads the Explorers Club and whose own quest – visiting every incorporated city and town in Kansas – resulted in a recently published Kansas guidebook.

Bill Bunyan takes his first bite into a hamburger Aug. 21, 2003, at Paddy's Restaurant in Sterling. Bunyan, a Kansas University graduate, spent three years traveling around Kansas with a goal to eat a hamburger in each of the 105 counties in the state by his 65th birthday. Bunyan spent his birthday eating his 105th burger in Rice County. About 45 friends and members of the Kansas Explorers club celebrated with him.

“There are so many ways to just fall in love with Kansas, and questing gives you the opportunity to do that,” Penner said.

The surge in questing can be attributed to two exploring forefathers – Larry “The Bowler” Woydziak, from Lawrence, and Bill Bunyan, a Kansas University graduate, the burger man.

Back in 1999, Woydziak decided to see the state by bowling a game in every Kansas county. He finished his quest – sort of – in 2001 after bowling in 79 of the state’s 105 counties. The other 26, it turned out, didn’t have bowling alleys.

Inspired by Woydziak, Explorer and Dodge City retiree Bunyan started his own quest in 2000. But he opted for a more foolproof plan, vowing to eat a burger in every Kansas county by his 65th birthday.

And he did. On Aug. 21, 2003, Bunyan bit into a bacon burger in Sterling, completing his goal before a crowd of well-wishers and news media.

A new quest

The story made him well-known, and he’s still regularly invited to speak to groups about his quest. He’s even started a new quest – to eat a steak in every county.

He’s up to 26 so far.

“Whenever it happens it happens, if it happens – if the cholesterol doesn’t kill me first,” he said.

The current batch of questers – about 12 that Penner knows about – is as varied as the quests they’ve chosen.

There’s Perney, a Salina city commissioner, who for no particular reason decided he’d stick his feet in all 34 Kansas fishing lakes. He even walks into the occasional dried-up lake and stomps around on the weeds, just to be official.

“It’s just to do something that’s a little bit quirky but still goes border to border,” he said.

There’s married couple Bonnie Johnson and Eddie Merkel, amateur pilots from Valley Center whose quest is to visit every small airport in the state. They’ve got a map full of orange circles noting the ones they’ve already seen.

They’ve also got hours of stories about the fascinating parts of Kansas they’ve seen and the fascinating people of Kansas they’ve met. At most stops, they’ll fly in, have a hamburger and a conversation, then fly out.

No deadlines

“We’re very informal,” Merkel said. “We don’t set any deadlines. When you set a deadline, it loses a lot of joy.”

And there’s Mann, a 72-year-old Hutchinson retiree who, after a year-and-a-half, has visited all but three of Kansas’ 54 operating soda fountains.

Mann, who has fond memories of the soda fountain she frequented as a child, has several photos of herself mid-quest – and even more memories of particularly luscious limeades.

But the quest is really about the journey, she said.

“In the course of seeing the soda fountains we’ve been to all four corners of the state,” she said. “It makes the news so much more interesting when we watch it because we’ve been to the little towns and we think, ‘Oh, we’ve been there.'”

Penner, who has a reputation for encouraging those considering a quest, says she’s always delighted – but never surprised – by the wild ideas the explorers come up with.

The best she can gauge, questing might be a quirk unique to Kansans.

“I’ve spoken in Missouri and Oklahoma, and when I tell them about these quests, they all seem pretty amazed that we do this,” she said. “They’ll say, ‘That’s cool. I wish our state did that.”‘