Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. Rural roads. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A. Somewhere in Florida, near Miami. Q. When did we see it on the show? A. In Episode 2, of Season 5, "Hello Bandit". We see Dexter driving through dry agricultural fields, following Boyd's yellow utility truck. As they head down a dirt road lined with palm trees, Dexter thinks to himself: "How desperate am I, to follow Boyd to the middle of nowhere?" Boyd's car swings onto another dirt road, this one lined on one side with tall eucalyptus trees. Dexter follows him to a secluded clearing, where he watches Boyd take a barrel from the back of his truck and throw it into a swampy pond. Dexter assumes that Boyd is just disposing of some of his dead animals, and then his investigation is cut short by a phone call from Debra, telling him that the kids are missing. Q. What is it actually in real life? A. Rural roads, but far from Florida. Q. Where can I find it in real life? A. The scene is composed of two shots.  The first has Dexter following Boyd onto a narrow road lined with tall palm trees. The second shot has Dexter following Boyd as he turns past some tree stumps onto a road lined with what appear to be eucalyptus trees.. Both shots were done in Oxnard, CA, of all places, not far from the dead raccoon location. The first shot of this scene, where Dexter follows Boyd onto the narrow road lined with palm trees, was shot on an unnamed dirt road just south of E. Hueneme Road, and about 60 yards east of the south end of Nauman Road. That road, which runs between two agricultural fields, appears to actually dead-end (after about 150 yards) at a farm house.

Here is a Google StreetView Panorama of that palm tree road:




Here is an aerial photo of the road with the palm trees. And here is a map link.

• The second shot - which has Dexter following Boyd around a turn (where a few tree stumps are visible) was filmed just one street to the east (of that palm tree road), on a dirt road that runs along an irrigation ditch, and is lined on one side with eucalyptus trees.

In that shot, Dexter is heading east on E. Hueneme Road and turns south down that dirt road.

That road is only about a third of a mile west of Pacific Coast Highway.




Here is a Google StreetView Panorama of that eucalyptus tree road:


And here is an aerial photo of the road with the eucalyptus trees. And here is a map link.


So, how about the swamp itself?

I have my suspicions, but I'm waiting to see the next two episodes before making up my mind about just where they shot it.

Right now, my hunch is that it's an amalgamation of several locations. It looks like they came to the Oxnard area to shoot those swamp scenes, but may have opted instead to shoot most of them at another spot, much closer to home.

If you follow that second road south, for about a mile, you will come to the wetlands area near Point Mugu Naval Base, and a swampy-looking pond that might (I add might) have been one of the locations where they filmed. But it's a hard thing to verify...


Warning: one or both of these dirt roads may well be private roads on private farm property, and if so, driving on them might constitute trespassing. I haven't been there in person to check, but on StreetView I believe I see a "No Trespassing" sign posted on a chain-link on the other side of that irrigation ditch. So mind those signs.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  I had already figured out the dead raccoon location. Based on glimpses of farm land in the background, I assumed that these roads might also be in the Oxnard area.

So I started my search at that raccoon location. I used Bing's Birds-Eye View to look for palm trees, specifically, a long row of tall, trimmed palm trees.

I didn't have far to look. I found it just a short distance from the dead raccoon road.

And it wasn't hard to confirm that they were the same palms. Count the palm trees along the road in that shot, starting from the right, and you'll see that the 7th palm tree is a tiny runt.. Now, compare that to the row of palm trees seen in the Bing Birds-Eye photo, and you'll find the same little palm tree, seven from the right.


Later, I went looking for the second road. Since I could see that it was lined with heavy trees (not palms), I switched to Google StreetView and began looking at the entrance to every road nearby that was lined with heavy trees.  There were a few of them. But I knew that the road I wanted had tree stumps at its entrance, as well as an overhanging limb of eucalyptus that dangled near the ground, as well as a power wire slanting up from the ground.

When I came to the right road, all of those elements were there - although it took some careful looking to see them from StreetView.  They did that shot with a long lens that greatly compressed the apparent distance between objects, so that overhanging limb, which looks like it's right next to the road, is actually a bit closer to the irrigation ditch. And that slanted power wire descends into that ditch... Finally, in one shot, at the far end of that road, you can see a farm house with two narrow trees next door. Bing aerial photos show that farm house to be right where it should be...