When Hi and Ed’s trailer gets trashed by his foreman’s kids, and then the foreman talks to him about wife swapping…isn’t the setting at Hi and Ed’s trailer, is it not? Then, the scene immediately thereafter shows Hi and Ed driving home discussing what happened to ruin this get-together with “decent people for a change”. Am I mistaken? If so, all I can say is “ok, then!”
Yes, they’re at Hi and Ed’s trailer, then they’re in the car. I never got the impression they were driving home, though, just that they were running some errands, or possibly discussing the issue away from the escaped cons.
After the “kids trashing the trailer” scene, the next location is at a park for a picnic. It doesn’t appear to be anywhere near their home, a drive home is more than natural. Why would one think that the picnic was near their home?
It works either way since they could have been out driving for any reason.
I will admit then I also was a little confused about where they were driving from and to. The backgound made it look to me like they were picnicing in the park just west of the Superstition Mtns so I was inclined to believe they were just diving home. (“Suburban Tempe” doesn’t look like the place where their trailer is shown, so I also figured that they were living in one of the undeveloped areas of Mesa and using poetic license to call Mesa "suburban Tempe.)
Well, ftg, I could have sworn that they carried the baby out the trailer door and down to a picnic table in their front yard, which would seem to indicate that they were just cooking out at the trailer. Previous shots of Ed and Hi outside show the trailer as being pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, so it seems reasonable that Hi and Glen were walking around near the house rather than walking through a park.
As for the background looking like a particular place, well, it might very well have been filmed there. That doesn’t mean that the story was meant to take place there, though. Only people familiar with the areas in question would know the difference, and they make up a tiny portion of the total audience. It’s like in Seabiscuit when they’re showing races at Pimlico. Those scenes weren’t shot at Pimlico, but rather at Keeneland. People who are familiar with either track would know the difference, but the rest of the world not so much.