Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. A rural road. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A. Somewhere in Miami-Dade County. Q. When did we see it on the show? A. In Episode 2, of Season 5, "Hello Bandit". Dexter finds blood in a moving van he rented, and his research shows that the last person to rent the van was one Boyd Fowler, who works for the dead animal pickup division of the Miami-Dade County department of Sanitation. After determining that the blood is human, Dexter sets out to meet Boyd Fowler. We next see Dexter standing on a rural road, out in farm country, next to a dead raccoon, which lies in the street at his feet. In the distance, a yellow truck approaches.  It's Boyd Fowler, who is responding to the call to pick up the dead animal. Boyd and Dexter have a brief conversation, standing over the carcass of the masked mammal. "Hello, Bandit", Boyd says to the raccoon (giving the title to this episode). When Dexter mentions moving, Boyd says that he has lived in the same house for over 20 years - prompting Dexter to wonder why Boyd rented a moving van. Boyd looks at the carcass and tell Dexter that there are no signs that the raccoon was hit by a car, and concludes that the animal was killed somewhere else and dropped here.

Dexter thinks to himself, "He's CSI-ing me" (which is funny, when you consider that both "Dexter" and "CSI:Miami" are supposed to take place in Florida, yet both really film mostly in Long Beach - often at the very same locations).

Boyd grabs the dead raccoon and unceremoniously throws it in the back of his truck, before driving off.

Unsure what to make of him, other than that he's peculiar, Dexter next goes to Boyd's house to look for clues.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. A rural road - but nowhere near Miami.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This scene was filmed far from Dexter's usual haunts.

That rural road is actually Nauman Road, in Oxnard, California.

The location on Nauman is just north of E. Hueneme Road, with the camera looking back south (towards Hueneme Road).

Google seems to map it out to around 5691 Nauman Road.

The area appears to be mainly agricultural fields, and this particular location is next to an orange grove.

The city of Oxnard, for those who don't know, is located in Ventura County, far north of Malibu, and near Port Hueneme, around Point Mugu Naval Base.

Here is a Google StreetView of the Nauman Road (looking south):

Here is an aerial photo of the location. And here is a map link.

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

A. This is a location that I almost certainly would have never found on my own.

For a show that routinely shoots in Long Beach, San Pedro and Hollywood, Oxnard is like the dark side of the moon. I would have never thought to look there.

Fortunately, an anonymous tipster gave me an early heads-up that they were filming in the Point Hueneme/Oxnard area.

So when this rural shot came up, I checked out that general region.

The scene clearly shows an open farm field (being plowed) on one side of the road, and what looks like an orange grove on the other side. Of course, I couldn't be sure that the orange trees weren't fake - to give more of a "Florida" look to the scene...

But the scene also shows a number of palm tall trees near that citrus orchard, a flat-topped redwood tree, and a stop sign. And in one brief shot, low buildings (with red windows) were visible in the distance, across the field behind Dexter.

Using Bing aerial photos, I first looked for open farm land in the general Oxnard/Port Hueneme area, and quickly found lots of it. I then zoomed in closer, looking for an orange grove, and hoping the individual orange trees might be visible from above. And they were - showing up as bright green, round dots and looking totally different than the other agricultural fields in the area.

Of course, there was more than one orange grove in the area.  That's where the palm trees and redwood comes in.

I switched to Google StreetView and looked at the south edge of that orchard from E. Hueneme Road, the only street offering Google StreetView in the area. I couldn't find what I wanted there, but when I looked north up a small side road, Nauman, there they were: the row of palm trees, the redwood tree, and even the stop sign.  And when I zoomed in, northeast, across the field, there was that distant building with red windows...