My route took me around the north side of Matthew Meadow until I reached Camino Equestra. I leave the pavement, pass through a gap in the barriers, and head up the ditch bank.
There the Griegos Acequia flowing through the neighborhood from the north and turns east, while a small portion splits off to continue south as the Menaul Lateral. In the video snippet below, one begins looking north at the Griegos Acequia flowing towards you before it rounds the corner and heads east. The small gate right at the corner controls the flow into the Menaul Lateral, which flows away to the south.
The problem here did not become apparent to me until I was trying to track down the proper nomenclature of these two ditches by looking at the RGMCD maps online. Below is my annotated copy of the area from the pdf of the 2012 Property Atlas Page for Map 34.
The blue lines are the official irrigation system. I've colored one blue segment with red to indicate an "official" line that does not in fact run diagonally across everyone's property. Instead, the Greigos Acequia follows the purple line along the obvious easement. The video above was taken at the intersection of the purple and blue lines near the 'M' of Menaul Lateral.
To further clarify matters, here's the view where the putative red line should join the blue line. There's only a minor gate that waters the large trapezoidal field to the northwest. It certainly isn't a significant in-flowing acequia, which would have intersected the current ditch at the corner in the left of the photo.
The truth of the matter is that the blue segment labeled 'Menaul Lateral' between the purple line and the red line is really the Griegos Acequia flowing eastward, not the Menaul Lateral, which would flow westward (and uphill). The Menaul Lateral thus begins at the irrigation gate in the video and only flows southward. The red line does not exist.
To continue my cycling adventure, I rode down a 1/4 mile further along the proper Griegos Acequia. A large siphon takes the water under the street where it resumes its
flow to the east. The water in the photo below is covered with an abundance of spring elm seeds.
This route ends a few yards away at the locked gate in the fenceline at 12th St. After a quick look around and some time to pester the local mallards, I returned the way I came.
Back at the "real" beginning of the Menaul Lateral, I headed south past Matthew Meadow Park and Matthew Ave. to where the lateral crosses the large Alameda Interior Drain via a tube with a small bridge.
The Menaul Lateral continues south as shown here, but a fence and locked gate prevented more exploration.
Instead, I headed east along the lovely paved bike path until I came to the obscure Foraker Lateral. This interesting bit of the irrigation system starts on the north side of the Alameda Drain where it splits off from the Griegos Acequia on the west side of Garfield Middle School Park. (The Griegos Acequia ends a 100 yards further downstream when it empties into the drain.) In the video below, I'm heading east on the bike path and turn south onto the ditch bank of the Foraker.
As with the earlier portions of the Griegos Acequia and the Menaul Lateral, the Foraker Lateral access ends for me after some narrow and rough trailriding at a fence and locked gate.
This video snippet from the return route gives some indication of the roughness of the route. At the cottonwood ahead, one has to dismount and walk one's bike around.
After that, it was a simple matter to take Los Arboles Ave. back to 12th and follow the bike path up to Matthew Meadow and home.
An abbreviated account of this ride is also described on my Google Glass blog, http://100daysofglass.blogspot.com/2014/04/day-63.htmlhttp://100daysofglass.blogspot.com/2014/04/day-63.html.
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