The Ultimate Walking Dead Fan Vacation
DAY 3: Haralson
After sleeping in a little later than we’d done the day before, we said goodbye to John, who had a prior commitment back in Jacksonville, and Shelby and I headed in the direction of Senoia again. This time, we turned just before we got to the downtown area, heading instead towards the town of Haralson, five miles away. There, Walkin Dead Tours, Events and Cosplay offers a tour of privately owned property that was used in the filming of nineteen different episodes of The Walking Dead (according to their count). The tour took about an hour, and cost $20 per person.
This tour covered a much smaller area than the one in Senoia, but it was fun in a very different way. Since it was private property and not patrolled by security whose job it was to keep us out, we could walk right up to, and in some cases, into, the buildings. Not only did we get to get up close to the buildings, each tour participant was allowed to carry a replica of a weapon that was carried by one of the TWD characters, so that you could take pictures re-enacting the scenes if you wanted to.
On this tour, we saw, among other things, the Esco Feed Mill, which is visible in the opening credits of seasons one through four, the area nearby where Daryl killed a walker between the silos while Rick and the Governor “negotiated,” we went inside the barn where that “negotiation” took place, and saw the spot where Daryl had to kill the walker that Merle had become.
After the tour, we walked around the shop that’s the home base of the tour, Cherokee Rose Retail. It has a variety of merchandise, from t-shirts and jewelry to replica weapons. There’s even a large cage in the corner where a squirrel lives! (Let’s just hope Daryl Dixon never finds it, or it might not go well for the squirrel…)
Our tour guide at Walkin Dead Tours gave us directions to three more filming locations nearby. The first one was the bridge where Daryl and Merle disagreed over whether they’d help the Hispanic family that was being attacked by walkers. It was across the train tracks and about five miles down the road from the shop where the tour originated, so it didn’t take long to find it. It was a plain enough looking bridge over a river, but once again it was cool to know that we were in the same place where the show had filmed.
The next filming location that their directions took us to was the church where Carol broke down when the group was out looking for Sophia. I love that whole scene in the show, in no small part because Melissa McBride is so good in it, and the church was easily recognizable. The church is no longer used, so we didn’t have to worry about anyone wondering what we were doing there. We couldn’t go inside, but it didn’t matter, – I could almost see it playing out before my eyes. There was one other car there, and those people were doing the same thing we were (we know, because they turned up at our next stop as well!).
The final place that the directions from Walkin Dead Tours took us was by far the coolest. Along the side of a wooded road we came to a small gravel patch where we could pull over in front of a large gate. There was a sign on the gate with a phone number you could call “to tour the set of The Walking Dead.” Beyond the gate, there you could see a glimpse of a waterfall and an area with some partially collapsed stone walls of a former mill building.
Luckily, there was also a woman standing at the gate to let us in. It cost another $10 per person, but we went in to see the area where the group had huddled around a campfire and Rick had given his “This is no longer a democracy” speech up close. It was another really surreal experience to be there, because it looked exactly as it had on TV. There was a small hill just beside it that we walked up for more of an aerial view, which also looked out over the lake that the waterfall flowed from.
Just as we got ready to leave, it started to pour, so the woman who’d let us in quickly directed us to one more Walking Dead filming location nearby. The driving rain seemed eerily appropriate for our drive to a long-since-abandoned gas station. I couldn’t remember what episode the woman who directed us there said that it had been used in, but several of my Twitter friends theorized and we think it’s the episode where Tyreese is upset about Karen’s death and walkers came through the vines. Clearly a lot more re-watching will be in order to confirm this – poor me!
Southern Ground
On the left side as you go up the hill into “Woodbury” you see a restaurant called Southern Ground, which is founded and owned by Zac Brown of the Atlanta-based Zac Brown Band. There are two main rooms, one of which has a raised stage and features live music several nights a week. Mara, our tour guide from the day before, had told us that this was the restaurant where The Walking Dead cast parties are held, which was a pretty strong endorsement. As we stood outside discussing whether that was where we wanted to eat, a guy stopped to rave about how good it was before he went in through the front door. It took about another five seconds before we went in as well, since we were hungry after another day of sightseeing. I had an “OMG Burger,” which lived up to its name, and a drink called a French Matador. Unfortunately, there was no live music on stage while we were there for dinner (it was the beginning of the dinner hour, and the shows start at various times depending on the day), but it was still a lot of fun.
Next: Day 4