Mesa Canals 8: Roosevelt Canal and Maricopa Floodway, University to Baseline

It should have been a lot more fun than this. In Mesa Canals 5 and 6, I rode the Roosevelt Canal to where it meets the Southern Canal. I remember looking southeast from where I stopped at University Avenue, and thinking that the floodway park and canal looked like ideal places to ride. Well . . . here's the approximately 4 1/2 miles from University to Baseline that I rode on Sunday, February 12, 2012. The first half-mile, from University to Main, was still very nice. The path through the floodway is macadamized (the small pebbles are stuck together with tar, making a light road-like surface), and the entrances from the major roads are narrow. I was riding my mountain bike, and always unclipped a foot from the pedals to have a bit more stability as I inched my way between the pipes. I guess that's fine, in that it slows the bicycle traffic and keeps motorized vehicles out. The canal and floodway, however, cross Main Street exactly at its intersection with Higley Road; it takes some looking around to see where the floodway trail goes. A rider or walker has to cross two main streets to get to the side of the road where the trail continues.

It actually crosses behind a U-Mart (see the picture on the right), to continue. The pathway is still well-paved, and some prefabricated senior dwellings actually have yards that front the canal, with no fencing. This must be nice for the older person who wants to walk his or her small dog straight out the door. And there are plenty of older people and dogs, most of them small (the dogs, that is) walking and running through the grass of the spillway. When one gets to the Broadway intersection, however, the true geriatric fun starts. It seems that S . . . I mean, Leisure World has blocked off access to the floodway because they built a golf course in it. I mean, OK, so they were here first, and they basically cordoned off a four square mile stretch of property (so that no public mile road goes through the area, and there's no freeway entrance), but to cut off access to the canal and the floodway? Here's how it is: the golf course cuts off the floodway, so I took to the east bank of the canal. At Southern, the east bank dead-ends at a floodway junction, and the east bank of the floodway is fenced up to the very edge(again, by S . . . I mean, Leisure World), so I cross the floodway junction to the canal access, where the east bank of the canal continues until it is cut off by a fence that stretches across the flat. One can swing around the edge of the fence over the steep part of the bank relatively easily if one is a walker. With a bicycle, it is just a little dicey, though it can be done. So, a tip. Take the west bank of the canal past the Broadway junction, and you'll get along fine until Southern Avenue. (By the way, enlarging the Google Earth picture at the top will give a sense of all the casting about I did, trying to find a route through the floodway. It will also show where I had to cross the canal south of the freeway).

In fairness, I do have to mention that at the golf course fence on Broadway, there is a retention pond of some kind for the course, which contains a flock of white cranes (see the picture at the left). A big flock, and a beautiful sight. Past Southern, I originally went out the west bank of the canal, because the entrance was clearer. It's kind of fun to go under the huge superhighway that the U.S. 60 has become. There's an SRP equipment yard just north of the freeway, and a fenced pump and lock unit just south of the underpass. The West bank of the canal is closed at this point. Thankfully, the lock is not blocked off, so it is possible (again, with difficulty) to walk one's bike across to the east bank. I continued down the east bank of the canal to Baseline Road, where I stopped, seeing new construction of yet another golf course in the floodway.

So, the way to get through most efficiently: Take the floodway to Broadway, then take the west bank of the canal to Southern (there is better bicycle access around fences on the western bank [see below]), then switch to the east bank to get down to Baseline. Really, though, the bottom line is that it was a beautiful day, and I explored several more miles of the canal system.