WHAT???? PALM TREES IN MAINE?

Palm trees in Maine? Yeah. Seeing is believing, right?

Not always. This is a little story about how you can’t always believe what you see…on TV.

No surprise that as a mystery writer I’m also a fan of mystery shows, a top fav being Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury (may she rest in peace) as mystery writer and killer catcher Jessica “J.B.” Fletcher. That show is set in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine.

I had a bucket list item of visiting that quaint town. Of course, I’m not so naïve as to think that Cabot Cove was a real place—and if it was, the per capita murder rate would be too high for me to want to visit! But the show had to be filmed somewhere. No way would any studio pop for such an elaborate set to include a quaint small town built on a hill, a bevy of Victorian homes, and an entire “cove” complete with boats and docks, etc. So Cabot Cove was “real”, even if it was named something else. There was no doubt in my mind it was somewhere on the rocky shores of coastal Maine, because that was where I expected it to be.

When my husband received PCS orders to Newport, RI, I started thinking about a road trip to visit “Cabot Cove”. I could jog through the sea grass, just like Jessica does in the opening credits. And like Jessica, I could wave at the seafaring folks as I strolled the piers. Wouldn’t it be grand to hang out outside Jessica’s beautiful home? And maybe, just maybe, one of Jessica’s writing muses would latch on to my pant legs the way sandburrs are wont to do, and I could carry her home and she would inspire me to write a bestselling novel. I started planning my trip as soon as the last box was unpacked in our New England home.

Just one problem—Murder, She Wrote was not filmed in Maine, a fact I learned when I researched where the show had been made in order to set my GPS. Turns out the exterior scenes were shot in Mendocino, California! Had I really paid attention to the show, I would have realized that some scenes actually have PALM TREES in them tucked amongst the stately scrub pines.

Mendocino was now a 48-hour (one way) road trip.

Did I mentioned we’d just moved from San Diego? A mere six-hour drive to Mendocino? (face palm…) I could have easily made that trip.

Opportunity missed. Bucket-list item scratched out. Life goes on. But I did learn an important lesson…don’t believe everything you see on TV.