jeanives: Unplanned in Esterhazy

August 31, we were on a bit of a long haul stretch from Estevan to Veregin to the National Doukobor Heritage Village and planning to spend the night in nearby Canora (named by putting together the 1st 2 letters of each word of, Canadian Northern Railway).
Passing through Esterhazy I noticed two road side signs: potash interpretive centre and flour mill. A quick aside: it seems that every town no matter how small has a grain elevator, a museum, a park, and signs at the outskirts that let you know about them. I had completely forgotten about the potash industry; largest producer of potash in the world! You can get lost in the farming details of 75% of Canada's mustard, best red lentils in the world (1.6 billion hectares), wheat, barley , oats, and canola, and many, many, many head of beef. And oil wells of course.
So I said, let's stop for 5 minutes. Two hours later we got back on the road. The museum alone was delightful with a wealth of human and household artifacts. Then the young caretaker said the potash interpretive building was definitely worthwhile, so again I said, 5 minutes. She opened up and 1 minute in, I said to Jim, "change of plan, we'll go to Yorkton tonight and Veregin tomorrow". Absolutely, says he. So we listened and learned and were awed and impressed. There is a city 3000 ft below Esterhazy with miles and miles of tunnels and roads, a mechanic shop, rest areas, and a 40 kph speed limit. Potash is a very big deal in Saskatchewan and the world.
And THEN the youngster-in-charge took us into the flour mill, the only wooden flour mill in left in Saskatchewan, which started gristing in 1907. AND it has an elevator attached so we got the whole story from the horse drawn cart of grain driven onto the scales, the bucket elevator that unloaded the grain, the gristing process,and the final product. Magic!
It pays to read the signs in front of you because Esterhazy was not on our radar at all and it was a fabulous stop for us.