Where to stay: Seaquest Motel, 801 W First St, 360-875-5349

Directions: I-5 S. to Olympia; then Hwy 101 N.; then Hwy 8 W.; then Hwy 107 S.; then Hwy 101 S.

It was the hottest day this summer so far, and the drive was twice as long as we expected. Bethany drove. I announced how hot it was whenever we passed an auto mall with one of those flashing signs that publicizes the temperature. The dashboard vents in the car were blasting a bone-chilling air, but the world outside was broiling: 96 degrees in south Seattle, 99 in Tacoma, 100 in Olympia. Approaching our destination, an under-populated river town called South Bend, we passed a town called Artic whose features seemed to ripple and shrink in the heat. Bethany pointed to some jet-black birds on the highway shoulder and said, "I can't see how they're not bursting into flame, those birds."

It is August--the hot, dead center of the most American season of all--and for the next four weeks various Stranger writers will be going on road trips to randomly selected destinations and reporting back. Bethany and I were happy to make tracks toward a destination we envisioned to be a breeze-swept, well-kept coastal town. We were surprised to find that South Bend, billed "the oyster capital of the world," is situated not in relation to the ocean but in relation to a bend in the fetid Willapa River. Its crown as the oyster capital is an industrial distinction: The town is full of seafood-processing plants and seafood wholesalers in grimy bungalows and abandoned-looking trucks piled high with oyster shells, which starved gulls circle and pick at.

Armed with a road map (very useful) and a copy of Best Places Northwest (not useful at all; South Bend doesn't appear in it), we found the place--a town that people don't so much as drive to but through. It's the kind of falling-down, half-deserted place that's euphemistically referred to as "historic." South Bend has a couple of amazing things to see--namely, the Sweater Store, in a giant building that looks a lot like a windowless Masonic bombshelter, and the Pacific County Courthouse, a gleaming palace on the top of a hill--but it's also fucking weird. A person walking down any of South Bend's sidewalks is constantly confronted with wooden benches dedicated to dead people. The river has five fake ducks floating in it. The restaurants are rancid. The bookstore sells religious "supplies." And the statue of a South Bend native and World War II hero that stands at the center of town is not carved from stone but from deteriorating wood, and is cross-eyed.

We stayed at the Seaquest Motel, which I highly recommend. (There's another motel in town, too, but it's scary-looking.) We were handed keys to room 20--which was, in fact, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen--and were advised to eat dinner at the Boondocks Restaurant, which was the only truly bad advice we got all weekend. (Without getting graphic, let's just say that the wise South Bend road-tripper gets what they can at the Pioneer Grocery and whips something up in their fully equipped Seaquest kitchen.)

After a quick walk to get our bearings, which didn't take long, we had a weird, worried dinner at Boondocks. (Bethany felt obliged to have an oyster, a precarious in a restaurant where even the cooked stuff looks iffy; I felt obliged to at least smash my food down so that it looked like I had eaten some of it.) Then we had a drink at Chester Tavern, where, Bethany predicted, "You'll be getting gay bashed and I'll be getting raped later." Chester Tavern had three people in it. We went for another walk. We saw the cross-eyed wooden monument again, we saw the fake ducks again, we saw the inside of the grocery store. (It closed early, and we knew we'd want some beer later.) Back at chez Seaquest, we sat on the rocking couch, took a couple tablets of Tylenol with codeine (thank you, Canada), and got stoned. Twice.

After dark, we went walking for a third time. Up a hill to see the courthouse against a sky of emerging stars; through the wide, unpaved alleys that separate the businesses along the highway (all empty) from the quiet houses behind them; and past a backyard party consisting of about 12 fat people, which explained where everyone was. In short order we were hungry again, and our only option--to hike down the highway to the nearest 24-hour gas-station mini-mart and buy some peanuts--seemed to us a perfectly defensible way to spend some time. It was also, we had been told, in the general direction of Riverfront Lanes, the town bowling alley.

The journey to the gas station was thrilling--in part because the town was so dark and dead and beautiful; in part because we could easily have been mugged, beaten, and killed. (In fact, when we asked our Boondocks waitress what we should do after dinner, she said, ominously, almost defensively, "Talk to the locals? Nothing's going to happen to you. Nothing's going to get stolen or beat up or robbed.") Of course, we were stoned, so we thought the idea of danger was hilarious.

Thankfully, nothing dangerous went down. We found a gas station that was still open and, after some doing, located the bowling alley. (How we missed it the first two times we walked past it, I can't account for.) The bowling-alley lounge was crowded--four's a crowd in South Bend--with bearish men playing poker, but the lanes themselves, in a separate, huge room at the back, were dark. Nevertheless, we ordered beers and started putting our fingers in bowling balls, lifting pink 16-pounders into the air and making enough of a ruckus to attract the attention of the owner. He introduced himself as Gordy and we asked him if we could bowl. He happily consented. He asked if we knew how to keep score, since it wasn't automated. Bethany said she did. I asked him if he had size 15 shoes. He did! He asked us if the center lane would be all right.

Gordy flipped on the lights and cranked the soundtrack to Good Morning Vietnam and, once we had our shoes and our beers, left us completely alone. "This is kind of like heaven," Bethany said, gearing up for a roll that ended, somehow, with her on the floor. "No annoying people. You can smoke. You can drink. I would be such a good bowler if I lived here, it would be insane." It is hard to describe what it felt like being drunk and stoned and having the bowling alley to ourselves, in a town that didn't know us, on a breezy night that was by all accounts sweltering back home. It was the kind of out-of-nowhere good time that can only really happen in middle-of-nowhere places. No one was looking, so we danced a little as we bowled, and worked up a sweat, and I began dreaming about taking the red-and-gray bowling shoes home with me. Afterwards, in the lounge, I explained to Gordy how hard it is to find shoes in my size in the city, and he said, "Are you serious?" and sold me the shoes for $20. (I offered $40, but he said he couldn't accept that much.)

The shoe sale was not the only happy surprise of the bowling experience. (Memo to Best Northwest Places: Riverfront Lanes, in South Bend, belongs in your book.) I will never forget, halfway through the game, more as if by magic than coincidence, asking Bethany, "How do you feel?" and Bethany saying, quite happily, "Good"--and, less than a minute later, as if on cue, hearing James Brown's '60s hit "I Feel Good" blasting from the bowling alley's old, loud speakers.