The Ultimate Walking Dead Fan Vacation

DAY 2: Hot and Sweaty in Senoia and Griffin

The Touring Dead

In advance of our trip, I had reserved a tour of Senoia for the three of us through The Georgia Mercantile Company. It’s at 60 Broad Street in Senoia, which is not on the main “Woodbury” block, but just on the other side of the train tracks, past the Senoia post office in a small building that holds a lot more Walking Dead merchandise than I would have thought possible for such a small shop. Incidentally, they just happen to sell gorgeous, hand stamped notecards made by our very own Undead Walking writer, Tracey Phillipps.

The tour, which cost $20 per person for ages 6 and up (kids under 6 are free), is called The Touring Dead. It’s advertised as taking two hours (though ours ran slightly longer, probably because Mara, our tour guide, was so fantastically knowledgeable) and covering two miles of downtown and historic Senoia. Besides giving information about the town, Mara pointed out which of the many buildings on the main blocks of Main Street had been used during filming of the Woodbury episodes. She even had a book of pictures of the scenes from the show to help remind us which scenes she was describing, for those who didn’t remember.

Besides the main street of Senoia, the tour took us by the “Pudding House,” where Carl sat up on the roof and ate from the giant can of pudding that he’d found, the “Safe House,” where Rick collapsed on the couch and Carl feared that he wouldn’t wake up, and the train tracks, which are no longer in use, where they shot Carol, Tyreese, Lizzie and Mika walking towards Terminus. (Terminus, however, was shot in Atlanta)

Ironically, those tracks now look far more overgrown and “zombie apocalyptic” than they do on the show! This was apparently because, according to our tour guide, due to the child actors in the scene they were required to use a substance on the ground that made it safer for them to walk on the tracks, so the grass had to be cut down.

At the end of the tour, I felt sorrier than I ever had before for both the actors on the show and for the characters living in the zombie apocalypse, because to say that it was hot outside did not begin to describe it. I’m not exactly from a cold climate, and southern Virginia gets pretty darn hot and very humid for most of the summer, but after more than two hours outside walking around in the Georgia heat and humidity, we were about as sweaty as it was possible to be. And yet, somehow it felt appropriate that on a Walking Dead tour, we should be sweaty, disgusting and uncomfortable. It was just another part of the experience.

Senoia Coffee and Café

It was past noon, and we were definitely ready to cool off, so we headed for the closest place to eat, which was Senoia Coffee and Café. We’d had a peek inside that morning as a part of the tour, because the shop was used during filming as the Woodbury Coffee House, and they have the Woodbury sign hanging inside. I couldn’t think about hot coffee after two hours melting in the sun, but I did have iced coffee and their Fried Green Tomato BLT. It was delicious, and we finally cooled off in the air conditioning. We had no time to lose, however, so after we finished eating it was time to move on and go back to Griffin.

Filming in Griffin (*possible season 6 spoilers!*)

Having been there the day before, we knew exactly where the action would be. Everything was as it had been the night before, except this time there were lots of people, quite a few large umbrellas, and more vehicles visible on the bridge from the view at the far end, a few blocks down 6th Street. We knew that this was only the second best view, however, so we headed around the corner, following the snaking path of the cables and finding them now plugged in to what must have been a large, mobile power source, the size of a small trailer, parked on the street.

As we approached the corner from which we’d had the best view the day before, we knew we were in the right place, because a group of ten or so people was already gathered there. Of course, it was a corner that sat directly in the sun, and it wasn’t long before we were just as hot and sweaty, if not more so, than we’d been that morning. The Georgia sun was truly unforgiving. When you see the characters sweat on the show, it’s quite likely that they feel as miserably hot as they look, no acting required for that part.

As we watched, we could just barely make out the shape and color of Abraham (aka Michael Cudlitz)’s bright red hair. Some of the time, we saw an umbrella being held over him, and other times we saw what appeared to be someone touching up his makeup. Then, we watched as someone who we could only assume was his stunt double climbed onto the wire looking frame that stuck off of the pick up truck.

After this happened a few times, we saw a walker added to the mix. While it was impossible to see the walker in enough detail to know exactly what it looked like, all we needed to see was the way it staggered forward toward the others to know that was what was happening. We could see the walker struggle with the figure on the truck, though we couldn’t tell what the outcome of the struggle was from where we stood. I think it’s for the best that we didn’t know anyway, though, because as hungry as I was to see something, I’d rather not know any of the major plot details ahead of time. I love the way the show surprises me.

We hung in there for a while, and eventually the crowd around us dwindled and the action on the bridge seemed to die down. We couldn’t tell if they were done filming for the day, or just done with the scene, but we’d been standing in the sun with no water for far longer than we probably should have, so we deserted our corner to regroup in the air conditioning of a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken with the biggest drinks we could buy.

Eventually we decided to make our way back to the car, which was parked a few blocks away, but at the last moment we took a slight detour down the block to the area where we’d found the trailers the night before. We were tired and sweaty, but got a second wind as we decided that we could at least take a quick look. Well, once again we could tell that we were in the right place at the right time, because as we approached the block across the street from the parking lot full of trailers, we saw an even larger crowd than the one that had been gathered by the bridge. Thankfully, this corner was in the shade, so we could watch the occasional van that pulled up, dropping off people who appeared to be on the crew, without melting any further.

At one point, we got a glimpse of a woman that we were pretty sure was Sonequa Martin-Green (“Sasha”), but she disappeared into a trailer and, at least as long as we were there, didn’t come back out. Finally, it was getting late and our phone batteries were all nearly dead, as were our own batteries after so many hours in the heat, so we left the corner and called it a day. The problem with a show that sometimes shoots into the night is that you just don’t know whether waiting all of those hours will pay off whatsoever. Though we hadn’t had a close encounter with a celebrity, we had had a very exciting day, and it was time to get a little rest so we could do it again the following day.

Next: Day 3