LOL. This is also a pet peeve with me. I was born and raised in Southern California (and lived there for more than 30 years) so the areas and spots where a lot of these shows were filmed --Chatsworth, Thousand Oaks, Vasquez Rocks-- are familiar to me and keep popping up again and again. It doubly stands out to me because now I've lived in Arizona now for about 30 years. As you must know, the deserts of Arizona and California are very different, so when I see a scene that's supposed to be in Arizona that's obviously in California (or vice versa) I notice it right away. One thing that I like about "High Chapparal" is that the setting was supposed to be in Arizona south of Tucson and you can really tell that almost all of the exterior shots are actually that area.
LOL...me, too. I lived in the White Mountains of Arizona for a while, worked in Wyoming, a bit in New Mexico, all over Washington, Oregon and California (CA from the lumber country in the far north to the deserts in the south). I traveled a lot in Colorado and Utah. Like you, I can spot authentic scene locations and get bugged when filming is done hundreds of miles away from the purported location. The Vasquez Rocks were real popular!
I always laugh when they show Mt. Whitney in the background and claim they are in the Gold Rush country. Or they show guys placer mining years after the placer deposits were picked clean and all the big mining capital investment was going into deep hard-rock mines. Or, worse, they show a guy in the desert placer mining with enough water to operate a rocker! There’s no water there for wet placer mining.