The Ultimate Walking Dead Fan Vacation
DAY 4: Exploring the Area
The Walking Dead Road Trip
The previous day, I’d been searching online for Walking Dead filming locations that we hadn’t seen yet, and had come across a fantastic website (The Walking Dead Road Trip: Your 13-stop Tour of the Show’s Best Filming Locations) that had put together a self guided driving tour, complete with pictures of, addresses for and directions to the locations. It had been posted in February, 2014, but it seemed recent enough that the information was likely still good. We hadn’t yet had anything planned for the fourth day of our trip, so this seemed perfect. There were a few things on the list that we’d already seen, but eight of them that we hadn’t. The first few were in Atlanta, so we set out toward some season one memories.
Rick’s House
Our first stop was Rick’s house, and it looked exactly like the picture in the article. The street was extremely busy (it was a Sunday, so there were lots of people out and about), and on the narrow side, so we had to settle for slowing down to take pictures from the car. There was no way we were going to find a place to park nearby, probably in large part because the house was across the street from one of the entrances to parking for the Atlanta Zoo. I can only imagine the chaos there must have been when they had to block off that road to film there! That led us to wonder, what made them chose that house to be Rick’s house? Or even that neighborhood? As we pondered this, we zipped on to our next destination.
The famous view of the skyline
You know the one I’m talking about. Rick was riding a horse on the highway. His side of the road was empty, going into the city of Atlanta, the other was full of cars that would never get out… That view. Granted, the picture on the DVD cover from season one appears to be taken from about half a mile before the Jackson Street Bridge where we were standing, but the difference could have been the CGI that was used. Either way, you get the idea. It was pretty cool to see in person.
Tank in the Street
No, the tank isn’t still there, but we found the intersection where it was sitting when they filmed that scene. I have to admit that I can’t picture exactly what that intersection looked like on the show anymore, but I’m sure going to pay closer attention the next time I go back and re-watch that episode! The website that we were using as our itinerary was nice enough to include a picture of each location, and it sure did match the picture, at least.
The CDC
No, it turns out that it wasn’t the real CDC where they shot this scene, which really shouldn’t surprise any of us. The CDC has serious work to do, and they don’t have time to stop the war against those terrible diseases just to let them film a TV show in their building. The “CDC” on TWD is a sleek, glass building that’s actually a performing arts center, which makes it much easier to drive right up and take pictures of it (you would definitely NOT want to try that at the real CDC, which, I imagine, is behind barbed wire and extensive security in another part of Atlanta).
The Hospital Where Rick First Wakes Up
Back at the very beginning, we saw Rick wake up at an abandoned hospital. It was a little bit creepy that he was the only thing left alive there, having outlived even the flowers at his bedside. This abandoned building was arguably much creepier now then it was back then. OK, there were no walkers shuffling by, or bodies lined up outside, but it was in a very sketchy part of town (the normal looking house across the street was surrounded by a fence topped with barbed wire. That right there was a major warning sign to us), and looked like it could have easily been a serial killer’s favorite hideaway. Shelby refused to get out of the car at all, and I didn’t go more than twenty or so steps away when I got out to take pictures, while leaving the engine running.
The Survivors’ Camp at Bellwood Quarry
Of all the filming locations that we successfully found during our trip, this was the only one that we tried to see but couldn’t get to. It was in that same sketchy part of town as the hospital – I would even argue that it was slightly scarier – but every time I thought I’d found an address that would work as an access point (after all, finding an access point to a quarry is different from finding a building), we were met with a tall chain link fence and various NO TRESSPASSING signs. After the third attempt, we admitted defeat on this one. Atlanta Beltline Bus Tours had apparently been the one way to see the inside of the quarry, but according to their website, access to the quarry has been suspended until further notice. Therefore, in case of a zombie apocalypse, don’t try to make a camp at the same quarry as our favorite survivors did.
Steve’s Pharmacy
You know the one I mean… It marked the usual beginning of Maggie and Glenn’s relationship, all because Lori wanted a pregnancy test and didn’t want Glenn to tell anyone about it. This building is located in the town of Sharpsburg, which is a very strange place. It’s a tiny little town and the houses are all still occupied… but the block long Main Street is empty and deserted. It was the creepiest thing! It could easily have been a scene out of The Walking Dead… Shelby and Lauren stroll down the deserted street, only to have a herd of walkers suddenly emerge out of nowhere and quickly surround them… Aaahh!! It makes me nervous just thinking about that town. But was it cool to see the pharmacy building? Of course!
The Carriage Bar
Right after the walkers in the barn had all been killed, including Sophia, Hershel decided that the zombie apocalypse is a good time to go out drinking – it had been a rough day, I suppose. Glenn and Rick find him at this bar, that just happened to be located at the end of the same block in Sharpsburg as the pharmacy. Once again, we took our pictures quickly and jumped back in the car. I was glad to be able to leave town without a walker attack.
Grantville
This is where our driving tour stopped following the website that I mentioned above. Items nine through thirteen on the list were things that we had already seen in and around Senoia. We did, however, add Grantville to our itinerary after Shelby searched the internet and informed me that Sharpsburg, despite its appearance, was not “that Walking Dead town that was sold on eBay last year.” The distinction belonged to Grantville. We were about fifteen or so minutes west of Senoia in Sharpsburg, and Grantville was another twenty minutes west of Sharpsburg, but we decided to add just one more stop before calling it a day.
When we got to Grantville, we were glad that we had taken the time to go there, because it was a very interesting town. Far from feeling abandoned, as Sharpsburg had, Grantville had an incredible amount of traffic for a small downtown area in which a maximum of three shops (one of which was a “Skateboard and Zombie shop,” which was closing as we walked by) were operational. The architecture of the buildings was older and had a lot of character, and we identified several buildings that we used for filming “Clear.” That was the episode in season three when Rick, Carl and Michonne inadvertently found Morgan, who seemed to have lost his mind.
The building that we recognized from a picture online was the one that Morgan’s “apartment” was supposedly in. When we walked by the window, we found a paper that said that tours were given at certain times (we had missed the window of time for that day by about half an hour). Of course, there was no way to know how old that paper was or if the information was out of date.
Still, when we peered into the window, we could see at least a little bit of what they had set up for people to take tours and pictures of. There was no way to know how much they were charging, or if it would be worth the money to see one apartment, no matter how well they had replicated Morgan’s hideout, but in the end the option wasn’t there so it didn’t matter. Ahh well, maybe next time.
We pulled up another picture online from that episode, of Carl and Michonne in front of a smaller, yellowish colored building but we couldn’t find one that resembled it. We decided that it may have been shot elsewhere, or they may have put a façade in front of another building (later that day, back in the Walking Dead store, “Clear” was playing on the TV and we were able to see a wider shot of the building. We realized that the building we had been looking for had likely been the very small yellowish building beside the train tracks). In any case, our tour of Grantville, and our day-long driving tour, were now complete. Unbeknownst to us, however, there was plenty of excitement left that day.
Maguire’s
Besides the pizza place, the Irish pub called Maguire’s in the basement of the building across the street from the Walking Dead store was the only restaurant in town that we had yet to try, so it seemed like a no-brainer. It had also been recommended to me as a good place to eat, which ended up being very true. Once again, we were ravenous by this time, and we devoured our dinner like hungry walkers. It had been a long, eventful day, and it was nice to relax. Our waitress called us “Walker Stalkers” – my Walking Dead t-shirt had given it away before we had a chance to even tell her what we were doing in town, but that was fine. After all, it was the truth!
Walker Stalkers
Before I tell this story, I want to stress that the term Walker Stalkers should not be used to imply that we were stalking anyone, of course. Did we want to see one of the stars of the show? Of course! Did we behave ourselves with complete dignity and respect when celebrities were anywhere nearby? Without a doubt.
After dinner we were hanging out on one of the benches at the bottom of the hill on Main Street in Senoia. We had a slightly obscured view of the visible part of the Alexandria set, but in between the trees, we could see various vehicles coming and going through the gate. It was still exciting, even after four days there. As other tourists walked by, some asked us what we’d seen, and we shared what we knew about what was going on in Senoia and the surrounding areas and what we’d learned over the past few days. We met some genuinely friendly people as we sat there.
As the evening wore on, one of the couples we’d met earlier came back down the hill and told us that Melissa McBride, Danai Gurira, Lauren Cohan and Michael Cudlitz had gone into the entrance for the Walking Dead Café. There was a rumor that there was some sort of photo shoot happening down there. They asked us not to tell anyone else, so that there wouldn’t be a crowd. So we walked back up the hill to hang out nearby, just in case we had a chance to be there when they eventually came back out.
We waited outside for probably close to two hours. It didn’t matter. It was a beautiful night, and we were excited that we might see even one of them when they came out. When we finally heard the door to the basement back entrance open, the first people up the steps were two security guards. They looked at the four of us seriously and said, “No ambushing.” We nodded without a word, and then they walked up with Melissa, Lauren and Michael behind them. None of them turned around to look at us, unfortunately. Lauren and Michael headed for their cars, parked right behind the building, and the two security guards walked to the parking lot behind the building across the street with Melissa, where her car was parked. Though we didn’t even get a smile from them, it was very exciting, and just before he turned out of the parking lot, Michael did wave through his heavily tinted car window.
Our new friends told us that Danai was parked by the front door of the café, so we walked around to the front of the building. After another hour or so, she emerged with the same security guards and walked straight to her car, just as seriously as the others had. So while it wasn’t the meet and greet you would get at a Walker Stalker convention, it was a thrill all the same. At that point, we went back to our hotel, amazed by how much we had seen in that one day alone.
Next: Day 5