Yesterday was a beautiful warm Sunday afternoon. Me and the family decided to hike at Sope Creek Park, local to Marietta, GA. The Sope Creek trails are a complex network of small bumpy trails through the woods and larger dirt trails where you can ride a bike. The main trail is an easy loop that's a bit under 2 miles.
The parking area is not especially large and we had to wait a few minutes for a spot to open. It was well worth the time.
The trails are well marked so that you know which are for riding bikes and which are not. And, there are also well placed maps throughout the trails so that it is fairly easy to get around the area.
As we peeked over the first wall we came across we found a perplexing scene - a person lying on the ground with what appeared to be fake guts on her belly.
Yes, you read correctly. There were zombies in the ruins. And some humans, too. And a film crew and lots of equipment. Turns out that a scene for The Walking Dead was being filmed at the ruins that afternoon. I do not watch this show as blood and guts stuff makes me feel ill but it was a really interesting view.
Lewis was fascinated and wanted to see how a TV show was made. So, we found a better vantage point and watched quietly for about 10 minutes. While we watched the lady in the black outfit below was very slowly attacked by a male zombie in a long sleeved Tshirt.
What a perfect place to shoot this show, eh? It's beautiful but a little creepy. There's not a lot of easy ways in and out of the ruins. During the scene we saw it seems the heroin has been cornered by one of the Walking Dead. Terrifying. But, not like on TV. Instead, very real. Which means that when you see the staging it looks, well, staged.
Lewis was surprised by how many takes they went through and how painfully slow the filming process is to complete. He did understand that coming across this situation was pretty special and managed to be patient with me and his dad while we watched. I love unique visual experiences and could have watched for a long, long time.
Anyway, since they were filming we couldn't go down to the best part of the hike - inside the ruins. That would not have been well received, I think. So, we moved along to the creek and enjoyed the view there for awhile before we turned back and headed home.
We did have to pass by the set one more time as we left. As we did the heroine finally did kill the zombie. I didn't take a pic of that. I was more keen on watching it happen. Sorry, folks!
So, the moral of the story is this... go out on a hike this weekend. You never know what you'll find! Maybe a deer... or maybe a zombie!