By the time we reach the highway, dusk has fallen and it’s time to find food and a place to spend the night. An eerie emptiness hovers over the open road and few cars pass by.

“It’s looking bleak,” Molly says. “How far to the next city?”

“Almost a hundred miles. You up for it?”

“Looks like we don’t have a choice.”

She plugs an adaptor into her iPod so we can listen on the stereo speakers, and we get into a discussion about the stupidest lyrics ever written—“This Is Why I’m Hot” would be my pick. But Molly points out Van Morrison’s “Ringworm” and then we dissect the lyrics of some old Yes songs.

“Anything sounds stupid if you listen too closely,” I say.

Molly switches to a track that’s in French. “Clearly, we’ve been in the car together too long.”

A few minutes later, I spot a billboard rising from an alfalfa field, with a light shining on it. “Ramblers Rest, in Possum, Illinois. Want to check it out?”

She nods and drives another mile to the next sign. There’s a red-neon light indicating Vacancy in the window of the office, which also contains a convenience store. The tires crackle over the gravel in the drive.

“What do you think?” Molly asks.

“It’s worth a look. If it’s horrible, we’ll drive away.”

It’s not horrible, just a bit strange. Ramblers Rest consists of a group of small, self-contained wayfarers’ cabins at the edge of a small trout pond. Our room is plain but clean, with walls of scrubbed pine, checkered curtains and an old-fashioned prayer posted above one of the beds.

The proprietor, a man in jeans and a plaid shirt, tells us there’s a bonfire down by the pond where guests gather around to sing songs and toast marshmallows.

“Songs?” Molly mutters. “No way.”

“We could harmonize ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

She cringes, and I send her a wicked grin. “Or ‘Kumbaya’?”

The closest restaurant, our host says, is a place called Grumpy’s, a few miles down the road.

“They’re probably closed now,” he warns.

Starving, we head up to the convenience shop adjacent to the office and buy hot dogs to roast over the fire, plus bright yellow mustard and squishy white buns—the kind of meal that is forbidden in a proper kitchen. On a whim, I buy the ingredients for a kind of dessert we haven’t made since Molly’s childhood camping trips. We hike down to the water’s edge where a teepee-shaped bonfire roars at the night sky. There are at least three discrete groups here, but all share that sort of instant camaraderie that seems to crop up among strangers at campgrounds. They make room for us in the firelit circle and we roast hot dogs, sharing the extras.

It’s amazingly tranquil around the pond, the sky intensely black in the absence of city lights. It’s so dark you can make out the colors of the stars—red and violet, silver and the shimmering green of moss in shadow. Their reflections glow like coins on the surface of the water.