Mesa Canals 15 (plus, an update of Mesa Canals 11): To Riverview Park and Beyond!

May 9, 2017

Today, to celebrate the end of my collegiate school year, I thought I'd finish scouting to see how far the Salt River/Tempe Town Lake trail had gotten.  I had also seen (about a month and a half ago) the way Mesa was building a route around the Mesa Country Club section of the canal route that I had documented in Mesa Canals 11 (Attempted Canal Route to Mesa Riverview).

What follows is a quick review of a canal-based route to Priest Drive in Tempe, using routes that I've described in Mesa Canals 3 and 11.  First, Mesa has undertaken to improve its street bike routes as well as the canal routes greatly over the past several years (thanks, Mesa!), so the routes that I did several years ago are now all paved (mostly concrete, but some asphalt), and the intersections are at least signed, but sometimes signaled as well.  The section described in Mesa Canals 3 has now been extended to Country Club; I got a preview (that is to say that the paths I took were signed as closed), so you will want to wait for a month or two before trying them.  They are installing signals at Mesa and Country Club drives, and have completed on-street bike lanes.  However, there are still protruding small standpipes in the center of the street-bike lanes that will have to be fixed before they open officially.  After crossing Country Club, the separated street lane continues down West Brown Road until 10th Street, where the route turns off.  At the 10th Street-Alma School Road intersection, a separated bike lane continues up Alma School to Bass Pro Drive, where there is a signal.

Go down Bass Pro Drive to the roundabout, then wind through the Bass Pro Shop parking lot, closest to the freeway.  Come out of the driveway to the Jimmy Johns exit lane, then straight up Dobson until it ends (it's a little freaky to cross the mouth of the exit ramp, though there is a signal).  On the river side is the entrance to the Salt River bike path.

From there on it's paved bike paths to Priest Drive.  The initial stretch (Riverview Park, Mesa to Tempe Marketplace) does not have any road crossings; the path takes some underpasses under the 202-101 interchange.  You will pass a Salt River bird refuge, some overflow (?) settling ponds from the sewage treatment plant near the new Cubs spring training ballpark, then under the various freeway ramps (very interesting to see one's commute route from a different angle).  The first street crossing is McClintock, at one of the entrances to Tempe Marketplace (it looks like an underpass is not planned for that area).

Once you pass McClintock, you're going past Carsten Golf Course, then past the newly constructed highrises near "A" Butte.  The view is impressive--Tempe Town Lake, spanned by bridges, an expanse of shining water, bordered by parks and tall buildings (with more on the way, judging from work that's taking place east of Rural).  Though the view is impressive, one still wonders about the lake and the development; there's something incongruous about a lake in the desert, which makes Tempe look a bit like the River Charles near downtown Boston.  That's accentuated by the tall buildings that obscure "A" Butte and Sun Devil Stadium.  Call me old-fashioned, but I did prefer the butte and the nestled stadium to a monument yard of concrete and glass blocks.  But, yes, I know that here is the only place Tempe can build upwards, without running afoul of the FAA and the Sky Harbor approaches.  But did they have to be almost as tall as the butte?

I digress.  The last few miles past the high-rises to Priest Drive start out scenic.  Note a few shapes drawn by my out-and-back route:  the paved path (I did use my road bike) is bordered by a packed small gravel path for runners.  It is not always clear where to make the switch when there are road crossings or access to buildings (magnify the section between Carsten and Tempe Beach Park).

Past the Tempe Center for the Arts and the bridge over the lake near the dam, a crew was working on what looked to be an underpass under Priest Drive on the south side.  The path was closed at this point.  Foolishly, the only pictures I took were right here (there are many more photogenic spots on this ride).

From here, I backtracked to the bridge, which I crossed, then checked the paved path on the north side that also ends at Priest (maybe some other time for the trip north on the Indian Bend Wash path).  The bridge is a great view both ways.

After backtracking, I took an alternate way out, through Riverview Park (see the tail on the Google Earth picture).  Take the right fork in the path west of Dobson; you'll find yourself in a parking lot abutting the sewer treatment plant.  After finding the path on the east end of the parking lot, cross the street and thread your way through the paved paths in Riverview Park to the intersection of Dobson and Rio Salado Parkway.  Either of those two roads will take you anywhere you want to go.

May 20, 2023

It has taken a long time to get back to this section. Technically, this is not Mesa Canals any more; when we hit Tempe, it's the Tempe portion of the Salt River Path, which is said to run to Central Avenue at the Salt River and maybe beyond (the Google Earth image is not completely clear). The approximately 2 1/2 miles more that we took past the closed Priest Drive underpass described above took us to approximately south of the terminal area of Sky Harbor airport, past the 143 Freeway. The trail to this point has been well-improved, with access points, underpasses and shade structures. We (Lex, Jeff and I) stopped at this point, primarily because the day was getting hotter, and we would have done 30 miles total for the morning. At some future point, we plan to start at Tempe Marketplace and try to complete the trail to where the improvements end, or to Central Avenue, whichever is farther.

The extension, May 20, 2023