Forrest Gump tour

Forrest Gump is a 1994 comedy film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, a simple-minded, good-hearted man who happens to turn up at important events in the postwar history of the United States. It is based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom.

While the film describes Alabama as Gump's home state, most scenes were shot around Beaufort, South Carolina, and feature nature, culture and architecture iconic to the southern United States.

Understand
"My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

- Often paraphrased as "Life is like a box of chocolates..."

The frame story of Forrest Gump (portrayed by Tom Hanks) takes place in the early 1980s, with Forrest sitting at a bus stop, telling the story of his life to strangers.

He grew up in his mother's boarding house in a small town in Alabama. Due to his low intelligence he was an outsider, but his talent for running gave him a career as an American football player for the storied Alabama Crimson Tide college team. He later became a decorated soldier in the Vietnam War, and a table-tennis player, and seemingly by accident turned up at historical moments in the 1960s and 70s. Forrest has a complicated love story with his childhood friend Jenny (portrayed by Robin Wright); and he concludes the story by telling that he waits for the bus to visit her in hospital.

In hospital, Jenny tells Forrest that she has an incurable virus infection (implicitly HIV/AIDS) and that they share a son. Forrest and Jenny marry, though she dies one year later. In an epilogue, Forrest sends his son to school.

The film pioneered visual effects where the main character was inserted into archival footage, and was the highest-grossing film in 1994 in the United States (the second worldwide, only beaten by The Lion King), and won six Academy Awards and several other recognitions.

Destinations



 * , site of the Gump boarding house and Jenny's farmhouse where she lived in as a child. Both built for the filming, and torn down as the film was completed. The young Forrest wears leg braces, and his unusual gait inspires a traveling guitarist, who turns out to be Elvis Presley. The driveway into the property was the filming location where Forrest Gump begin to run to escape bullies who chased him as a child and again as a teenager while Jenny yells, "run Forrest run!" The entrance from the main road served as the school bus stop for young Forrest and where he sees his son off to school at the end of the movie. The plantation is private property and can only be seen from the main road.
 * and, were settings of the Vietnam scenes. Mountains in the background were added with CGI.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * and, were settings of the Vietnam scenes. Mountains in the background were added with CGI.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * and, were settings of the Vietnam scenes. Mountains in the background were added with CGI.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.
 * Ater meeting at the Reflecting pool Forrest and Jenny went for a walk along in front of the White House and along  to catch up and then he hands his Congressional Medal of Honor to Jenny. The park parking lot of Floral Park was where the buses lined up and where Forrest says "good bye" once again as Jenny boards her bus to Berkeley.

Running sequence
As Jenny turns down Forrest's proposal for marriage, he begins running across the country. The following are the places filmed where he ran through:
 * downtown Varnville
 * Chowan Creek (or Cowan Creek) Bridge linking Ladies Island and St. Helena Island, east of downtown Beaufort, saying ‘Mississippi Welcomes You’
 * Santa Monica Yacht Harbor, California on the west coast
 * Marshall Point Lighthouse, near Point Clyde, Maine
 * Cut Bank, Montana
 * The bridge as St. Mary Entrance to Glacier National Park, north of Kalispell, Montana
 * On the Woods Memorial Bridge where US21, Sea Island Parkway, crossing the Beaufort River east of Beaufort, Forrest is interviewed by reporters
 * Grandfather Mountain near Linville, up near Asheville in North Carolina, the curve where Gump sees he has companions. The bend is now signposted as Forrest Gump Curve. The entrance to Grandfather Mountain (there’s an admission fee) is on US 221, about two miles north of Linville, and a mile south of the Blue Ridge Parkway, at milepost 305.
 * North San Francisco Street, Flagstaff, Arizona, where Forrest steps into dog faeces and invents the phrase Shit Happens.
 * Twin Arrows Trading Post, 20 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, where Forrest by accident creates the Smiley Face.
 * Monument Valley in Arizona, where Forrest decides to go home, following 3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours of running.

Eat


The below are locally owned restaurants that were used as filming locations but still function as restaurants: