Headache in Manila

Sunday we headed out to the small town of Manila and yes it was named after the Manila in the Philippines.  They named it that to commemorate the naval victory at the Battle of Manila Bay.  The population may be about 300 so it is very small. We planned to stay here three days to explore the Flaming Gorge area which includes a large reservoir. Shortly after we got on our way our truck began giving us signs that it wasn’t happy. We had a message saying the diesel exhaust was “ cleaning” which takes place passively as you drive. We had never seen that message before. So out comes the Ford manual and I’m frantically reading all about it. It comes on several times. As we get closer to our RV Park which is small we get the message service now!   Can we make it to the park or will we break down?  Then Dan remembers we bought the extended warranty with this 2017 Diesel Ford of which we only have 40,000 miles on it!  So I dig sone more for that. We only had the brochure!  The important papers were at home in the “ truck” file. So thank goodness our daughter is back in AZ and she can search for us and snap a copy of what we need.   We pull into our small park and the owner is great. He winters in Gold Canyon, AZ which is east of where we are.  He helps us get set up and I get online to make a Ford appointment in Rock Springs which is about 45 minutes away.  Our plan is to try to get there the next day and if we have to rent a car and take it around for our exploring.  We get into Rock Springs early.  They are nice and look over our warranty.  We have a $100 deductible for anything it covers.  They say they probably need it overnight so we walk barely two doors down and there is a rental car company!  We go in and for $45 we get a cute red car. We decide we can’t sweat it so we take off and go explore the gorge.  Later in the day they all us to say they will have to manually heat up the exhaust and burn out the carbon.  Our warranty doesn’t cover that!!! 

The gorge is impressive but it’s very difficult to access the water without driving miles down dirt roads that aren’t made for our rental car.  But we enjoy the drive and scenery. Dan figures the next morning he will drive into Rock Springs and drop off the rental car.  Then go to Ford and pay our $500 bill.  He does that and no sooner gets a mile down the road the the check engine light comes on…. So back to Ford he goes!!!  They were great.  They put in another $100 part not knowing if that was really the issue and didn’t charge him.  They said if it comes on again it could be $5000 and they weren’t sure our warranty would cover it!!!  

Anyway it was a lot of anxiety but at this stage of the game we were just hoping it fixed our issue and we could stay on schedule for our next stop, Idaho Falls.  

The scenery went from rocky desolate more green and lush pretty quickly. 

But the snow capped mountains were impressive. 

I took this photo for folks that read the blog but don’t know what snow fences are.  They were everywhere as we traveled on protecting the highway from large drifts of snow.  Sone were wooden and others were metal. 

We began to see cattle country and large farms and ranches. There had been plenty of rain to green things up. 

Then back to juniper country but huge clouds. Our weather said be prepared for thunders storms, hail and wind! 

And then we hit Utah.  

The small KOA where we stayed. No pool but several cute cabins, picnic areas and a playground. Very quiet and not full at all. 




An idea of the gorge area and reservoir. 

The next day as we headed to Rock Springs we scared to pronghorns off the highway and the scenery turned more to dry sagebrush. 

Rock Springs wasn’t too big but it was a huge train depot with as many as 6-7 train tracks running through town. The town had most everything you would need but wasn’t too picturesque and Rocky!

We also passed through the small town of Green River.  Lots of very small places. 



After we got our car we headed around the east side of the Gorge and saw lots of beautiful wild flowers…. Spring was just coming here at the higher elevations.   Indian Paintbrush 


Beautiful purple clusters scattered everywhere..

Then yellow clusters..

White bunches..

More deep red paintbrush..



And we start to see the colors of the gorge come into view. 


Our red rental car!!

Scarlet Gila. 



Blue beauties..

Color tucked into the cracks bringing beauty even here 




The Flaming Gorge Dam!  

This is an outlet for overflow from the dam.

Wow!!! 





Layers of color from millions of years of sediment. 


Our camping spot…drying out some plastic under my flower pots that we brought. 

The office for the KOA


Our spot in Manila. 

Dan got back with the truck from Rock Springs after a second fix. So far no more issues. The next day we are off to Idaho Falls. A longer day for us so we will leave early and pack up as much as we can tonight.