TWD Scavenger Hunt: Newnan

Back in March, I embarked on a fanmom adventure to hunt down The Walking Dead films sites over spring break, taking my mom and 13 year old son along for the ride.  I’ve already posted a bit about how I became a fan of the show and how that led to planning for this trip (http://www.fanmomchronicles.com/2016/05/the-walking-dead-scavenger-hunt-begins.html).  So now it’s time to really kick the scavenger hunt into high gear with our first full day of touring.

Using The Walking Dead Locations map, I planned out a route for the day that I thought would give us some great sites, plus time it right for a really fun tour my friend Suzie had raved about.  So we left Peachtree City and headed to Newnan right after breakfast.  Newnan is a beautiful little town with a great feel.  I think I could’ve spent most of the day here just exploring the city itself, checking out the shops on the main drag and the southern architecture.  My mom was enthralled with all the old homes we drove past on our way to film locations.

Our first location find was the set of tracks where Sasha and Bob kiss then part ways, as Sasha goes on to find Maggie (Season 4 Episode 13).  We were able to walk around the building to see Sasha’s vantage point from the upper story of the building where she saw Maggie sleeping on the ground surrounded by walkers.  The building actually houses Bridging The Gap, a community outreach program that works to meet the needs of individuals and families in the area, including distributing food, toiletries, etc.  For more information on their great work, visit http://www.btgcommunity.org/ or you can find them on Facebook.

 

We followed the map further into town and located the Governor’s walker arena (Season 3 Episodes 5, 8 & 9), a space that was also used in the filming of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.  Since we weren’t on an official tour, we couldn’t go down into the space, but were able to see it well from up above and got some really good pictures.  We moved on to more train tracks, finding the filming location where Maggie is traveling alone and kills a walker to use its blood to leave a message for Glenn (Season 4 Episode 13).  The really neat thing about driving through these towns is that you could see potential filming locations everywhere.  And while there were times I was sure that people were thinking, “Why is this crazy woman getting out of her car to take pictures of train tracks?’ I was having too much fun to worry about it for long. 

Our last big find in Newnan was the old motel where Merle stops to get a car and ties up Michonne to a post (Season 3 Episode 15).  The two get attacked by walkers and narrowly escape.  The Oaks Inn was a pretty creepy location, and although sections looked abandoned, some of it appeared to be lived in.  We didn’t want to bother anyone, so we took pictures from the street before pulling in to the parking area to take a couple of quick shots then leave.

Regardless of the location you visit, it’s important to remember that all these properties belong to someone and sometimes they are not as eager to have tourists come by.  Always be respectful of the location, property and owners and if the sign says not to trespass, don’t cross the line.  There were many times that I took photos of locations from my car, making sure that I was not photographing other people or bothering anyone.  It was a delight just to see some of these locations in person!

There were several other places to find in Newnan, but it was time to move on if we wanted to make it for our tour in Grantville!