So forget fun in the sun. How about fun with guns, nuclear reactors, trashy fast food, and impulsively acquired tattoos?

To research the ultimate in white-trash day trips, I talked crack Phoenix Styles section maven Ellen Barry into manning the wheel for a run to the New Hampshire border. We put an old Nuclear Assault tape in the deck, and our mission was clear: find Armageddon, or as cheap a facsimile as our expense account would allow.

"Traveling a commercial highway like Route 1 north of Boston," writes James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere (Simon and Schuster, 1993), "surrounded by other motorists, assaulted by a chaos of gigantic, lurid plastic signs, golden arches, red-and-white-striped revolving chicken buckets, cinder-block carpet warehouses, discount marts, asphalt deserts, and a horizon slashed by utility poles, one can forget that commerce ever took place in dignified surroundings."

Dignified this road trip ain't. Indeed, for my money the best buys on Route 1 start farther up the road, and they don't come in vinyl-sided retail outlets, or perched under neon. But Route 1 -- perhaps one of the greatest monuments ever built to unbridled consumerism, a cartoonlike circus of bigger and better and more -- is the only way to get where we're going, thematically speaking.

Our first stop: Bob's Tactical Indoor Shooting Range and Gun Shop (along a two-lane stretch of Route 1 just before you hit New Hampshire, locally identified as 90 Lafayette Road, Salisbury; call 978-465-5561). If you're wondering whether you've got the right joint, look for the following stickers on the storm door: an NRA-issue NO MORE GUN LAWS; an ad for a gun-cleaning solvent that reads SAVE YOUR GUN'S LIFE; two American flags; skulls with the message CRIMINALS BEWARE: NO PRISONERS TAKEN; PLEASE UNLOAD YOUR GUN AND REMOVE YOUR SKI MASK BEFORE ENTERING; and MASTERCARD: OFFICIAL CARD OF THE WORLD CUP. It's just before noon. Only the range master's pickup is in the lot. He's an accommodating, quiet, sharp-eyed guy with a gun strapped to his waist, and he stands beneath a poster featuring an electric chair and the words JUSTICE: REGULAR OR EXTRA CRISPY. We don't own guns. Ellen's never fired a gun in her life, and I've been shooting only once (here, a couple years ago, with an ex-girlfriend). No matter -- they've got rentals. You don't need a permit. You sign a release form, and Bob, the range master (his real name isn't Bob, but let's pretend it is), gives you a quick demonstration of how to load the thing and point it (there are two stances: one of 'em was called isosceles, like the triangle, and by the time he got to the second one I was daydreaming of quick-draws). He gives you a gun, a box of ammo, and a pair of headphones and you're off to the adjacent shooting range, which looks a lot like a garage with a few tons of gravel at one end. Range fees are $6 an hour. Gun rental is $7 an hour. Paper targets with a blobby milk-bottle outline set you back about 35 cents.

We're beginners: we start with a .22, which at very close range might conceivably scratch the finish on your car. A box of ammo is less than two bucks. You attach your targets with paper clips to a piece of bullet-riddled cardboard; a motor reels it out on clothesline to a distance of 21 feet, just beyond your shadow. The air conditioning is gale force. Pop, pop, pop. Feels like a toy: there's no kickback, and little pockmarks magically pepper the paper. Ellen is unimpressed. "I thought it would be scarier," she says.

We zip through the .22 ammo and trade up for a .38 special. It's got a nice jump to it and puts thumbnail-size holes in the target, a puff of pulverized cardboard powder sparkling in the track lighting like stardust. It also has a light trigger, and this is where you start to understand something weird about guns -- there is a lost moment between the instant you're thinking about pulling the trigger and the sudden splash of fire/smoke/crisp-loud-SMACK!, the gun trying to leap out of your hand and the bullet already just a hole in the target. The first time you fire the .38 -- even the second time, and periodically after that -- you can't remember pulling the trigger. You take aim and are suddenly startled by a flash and an acrid, sulfurous gash of smoke. It's almost like -- and don't take this as some kind of hippie-liberal rationalization -- it's like you're not in control. The gun goes off, and you think, "Did I do that?" It feels very much as though the gun is calling the final shots (so to speak). But it's fun -- it's like an infrared shootout at the arcade. We go through two boxes of ammo ($5.50 each). The barrel is hot to the touch -- happiness is a warm gun. And though Ellen and I are both a bit freaked out, she's hooked. She wants more. She wants bigger. She wants the .45.

We go back to trade up again, and Ellen is carrying the .38 in her right hand, with the cylinder snapped back into the yoke -- in other words, for all Bob knows, the gun could still have bullets in it. He eyes it all the way over and explains the etiquette to us -- always carry the gun with the cylinder swinging out from the yoke. "Do you ever get nervous?" asks Ellen. "Well, yeah," says Bob, a bit nervously. "It's like my wife says: it's not shoes we're selling here."

The next gun is sleek and black and cool. It looks like the guns cops and thugs use on TV: it's got a 10-bullet cartridge that slips into the handle, and the rounds are shaped like hornet-size die-cast reproductions of an A-bomb. The cartridge is spring-loaded; trying to jam the bullets into it is like trying to force-feed billiard balls to a snake with a trampoline in its throat. I keep almost dropping the thing -- convinced the bullets are all gonna spark and go off and kill us -- and after getting seven bullets in we call it loaded. I point the fucker downrange, brace myself, clench my teeth, and the thing explodes with a roar like a cannon -- louder than a drummer sound-checking his snare at an arena show, louder than a car crash, louder than anything I've ever heard, a solid, ominous, flat boom with a dull ring of abject finality -- and nearly rips my arm out of its socket. For a second I think I may have chipped a tooth.

I've missed the target entirely. Ellen's looking like she's seen a ghost. I shake my head, try another one. It feels silly, the gun bucking away from me like a hyena's jaw in mid-snicker. I fire another. And then give it to Ellen: she fires a few shots, shakes her head, puts it down slowly. We call it quits, leaving behind an almost-full box of cartridges. By the time I get done paying the bill -- a measly $33.42 -- Ellen's at the car reaching for the cigarettes. I can barely get mine to my lips. It isn't fun if you're not scared.

We cross the New Hampshire border and turn off at the entrance for the Seabrook Station Science and Nature Center (603-474-9521; open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.). It's located just up Route 1 from the entrance to the nuclear plant proper. After a few wrong turns, we end up at an innocuous-looking building next to a tree-lined path marked OWASCOAG TRAIL: "LAND OF MANY GRASSES." There's a bird feeder out front and a sign festooned with a fish, a bird, and a light bulb. It says: IF YOU HEAR A LOUD, ALTERNATING HI-LO WARNING SIREN: REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO YOUR SITE HOST, A SEABROOK STAFF MEMBER, OR TO A SECURITY OFFICER; OR RETURN TO YOUR CAR OR BUS WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF YOUR PARTY, AND EXIT THE SITE.

Evacuation plans are a touchy subject in these parts. "No Evacuation Possible!" is something of a rallying cry for some residents, who fear the plant's contingency plans are a lot of wishful thinking. But we try not to think about that. Inside, the building's lone occupant, a middle-aged woman, informs us that the bus tours of the plant advertised on the sign outside were "severely reduced" about four years ago due to the volume of terrorist threats. Instead, she offers to run an introductory film for us in the auditorium.

We're still jumpy from the .45, what with our powder-burned knuckles and all, and in the back of our minds we're worrying about the siren thing, but we make the best of it. The film's a howl, like an update of those old Our Friend, the Atom movies you see used in bad multimedia performance art. Seabrook spokesman Joe Grillo (no word on whether he's related to the "Grilla Special" offered at a nearby Mobil station: hot dog and a Coke for $1.49) narrates a tour of the plant, touting nuclear energy as "power for a booming economy." He assures us: "This place looks formidable, but it's really just a power plant." He has a lot to say about the containment facility -- the planetarium-looking cement dome where they house the radioactive fuel -- which we're told has been built to withstand an earthquake of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale, or the head-on crash of an F-111 fighter jet. (Nice to see such faith in our armed forces.) "Containment represents the commercial nuclear industry of America's dedication to safety," he drones. "At Seabrook, good simply isn't good enough." Har!

After that we roam through a couple of exhibits aimed at local schoolchildren. Best is the sunny one called "Radiation Is All Around Us," a true/false quiz that includes the following: "Radiation exists naturally in food and water, the air I breathe, and the earth around me" (True!); "I receive more radiation living near a nuclear power plant than I do from one dental x-ray" (False!); "Most of the radiation I'm exposed to comes from man-made sources such as color TVs, microwaves, x-rays, and nuclear power plants" (False! Over three-quarters comes from natural background sources!); and my fave: "My own body is naturally radioactive" (True!). This leads up to the brilliant interactive computer quiz sensation "How Radioactive Are You?"

Turns out we're pretty fuckin' radioactive, so we figure, what the hell -- let's see how close to containment we can get. Well, actually Ellen decides this. She's the brave one. We stroll unmolested past a bunch of guys in hardhats, past what appears to be a security guy. Some guys in a pickup headed toward the "siren maintenance" building give Ellen a friendly wave. She waves back. Nuclear power really is your friend! We get as far as a checkpoint where a sign states in very clear language that we're not supposed to go past it unless we want to go to jail. Then again, it's unguarded, there's no one around, and it looks like there might be a door in that barbed-wire fence a ways down. . . . Maybe we explored farther, maybe we didn't. Our lawyers are telling us to shut the hell up.

The road out of the plant -- at least the one we took -- hits Route 1 right out in front of the Roadkill Café (620 Lafayette Road, Seabrook; 603-474-9302), which sports a drawing of a bloody, tire-flattened squirrel on its shingle. Inside, among a jumble of traffic signs, diesel truck parts, hubcaps, and souvenir mugs, we're offered a menu scribbled on a NO PARKING sign and a vaudeville routine. "Where d'ya wanna sit -- smoking, no smoking, learn how to smoke, or secondhand smoking?" asks the grease matron. Turns out it's a dive bar by design -- who knew? -- but unlike a similar joint in the Back Bay, this place quickly makes it hard to see the line between the performance and the performer. Ellen's trying to play it safe with a white-meat dish. "What's with `The Chicken that Crossed the Road?' " she asks. "It died," the grease matron answers. Turns out the dead chicken is served with a glass of beer that's roughly the size of a prosthetic leg.

There are plenty of tattoo parlors in Seabrook -- many of them right on Route 1. Unfortunately, they all seem to be attached at the hip to fireworks outlets, as if there's some kinda Siamese town ordinance. And since we've had enough pyrotechnics for one day, we zip up Route 1 another half-hour north to Portsmouth, a quaint, quintessentially New England town that's home to tourists, expensive coffee, and the Tattoo Shop (113 Daniel Street, Portsmouth; 603-436-0805), where a couple of old-timer biker dudes named Hobo and Tattoo George hold court. It's where I came a few summers back to get inked for my one and only body modification. ("This is exactly what you need," Hobo told me at the time. "I know these things." And he was right.) They do good work, and provide a happy medium between the artsy-fartsy types who want to use astrology to tell you what to put on your body and the sideshow-freak hepatitis holes. You can get a nice old-fashioned skull at the Tattoo Shop and not worry about catching anything. But the old guys aren't around today; some young blood's holding down the fort, since it's still a bit off-season. There's also a piercing parlor in the same building. The piercer guy's giving some very intense, medical-sounding instructions to a girl who's just had another hole put in her ear. A girl of about 17 waits off to the side to see whether she's got the kind of tongue that can be pierced. Just looking at her, you can tell her mom is gonna be really mad. How will she get the captain of the crew team to take her to the prom with a bar through her taste buds?

On summer weekends, if you're not at the Tattoo Shop by noon to get your name on the waiting list, forget it. Sometimes by 11 the wait will be two or three hours. For larger tattoos, they recommend calling ahead. Small stuff starts at $25; there's a $15 surcharge for work on hips, stomachs, and rear ends, and they don't do hands, feet, or anything above the neck. Armbands run between $120 and $250.

They also won't tattoo you if you're drunk, so while you're waiting we recommend the local punk/hipster coffeehouse that's located a few blocks away, the World Famous Elvis Room (142 Congress Street, Portsmouth; 603-436-9189). There's a pretty good jukebox (early Social Distortion was blaring when we walked in), it's the local stop for hardcore and ska, and there are couches, books, a pool table, and more varieties of caffeine than beer. It's also a good place to scope out ideas for your next tattoo (everyone's got one, and invariably someone's just come from a tattoo shop) -- or get spooked off the idea altogether. We get a cup of coffee for about a buck to make our jitters get the jitters, smoke a few cigarettes to take the edge off, inspect the photos on the wall (hey -- it's Scissorfight!), and bitch about how the place is so obviously fake white-trash.