October 27th: One Tree Hill Location Tour - Part 2

I was to meet Katie at the Port City Java on Grace Street. I’m not one for drinking coffee, so I got a hot cocoa, sat down and waited for Katie to arrive.

Before entering PC Java there were a couple white vans parked across from Karen’s Café and 8-10 guys standing outside the front. They were there for only 15 minutes or so. I was hoping we’d catch some filming, and here was my chance! Katie arrived and when I told her about the vans - she said it looked like they’d be filming there, but not for a while. As we were leaving, two white vans showed up again, but there was still no clear indication anything was going to happen.

We walked down to Chestnut Street and saw a couple white vans parked outside the Cape Fear Hotel and Apartments(corner of 2nd and Chestnut) Inside this building there’s a ballroom on the top floor. This week’s episode(Season 2, Ep 9, The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, aired 11/16/2004) involves the cast attending the High School Formal w/ Dan and Deb as chaperones. We did see a van pull up and drop off 4-5 extras - girls in their formal dresses. Around the corner on 2nd, there were production trucks, with a few guys in tuxes sitting there on a break.

We then thought to see if any of the cast’s trailers were in the area. Where Katie said they would usually park, they weren’t there, so they could have been parked anywhere in the area.

So then we took off for River Court - across the bridge and near the battleship. You may wonder how they miss getting the battleship in the picture. It’s all a question of angles. Across from the River Court you can see a large building with lots of windows and a fountain in front of it. It’s a government building. We went back across the bridge and turned right, and found the warehouse where Haley and Nathan had their wedding reception, and is now Karen’s new club Tric. Happily found the neon Tric sign in the window, but it wasn’t lit up.

On our way back downtown, we saw where they were doing filming for OutKast’s film, ‘My Life in Idlewild’, and stopped to go back for a better look.

Along the way, I saw a strange metal sculpture on someone’s front porch, and where we were standing to watch filming, I was mightily impressed with the garden attached to this house(see picture below).

We had parked on the corner of a street where they just happened to be unloading the extras for the OTH formal ep. Katie said it was a holding area for the extras.

I didn’t make a notation of this in my journal, but I believe this was the day we stopped and had lunch in Hell’s Kitchen(on Princess Street), which served as the Smiling Donkey in the episode where Nathan stops to visit Taylor (Season 2, Ep 18, The Lonesome Road. Aired 4/26/2005)

So thus ends my One Tree Hill Location Tour. While I only included some of the high points of the tour, if you’re wanting to go to Wilmington and go on your own location tour, here is one of the best sites to list the OTH filming locations. WilmyK8E’s OTH Location site If you have any questions about my trip, feel free to ask on the site’s forum.

October 21-22: Travel days October 23rd: OTH Football Days Pt. 1 October 23rd: OTH Football Days cont'd
Oct. 24th and 26th, Carolina and Kure Beach, Fort Fisher Oct. 25th, One Tree Hill Location Tour, Part 1
Oct. 27th, One Tree Hill Location Tour, Part 2