"The Difficult Journey" is a one page, fictional, reading passage about the hardships of a family of early settlers moving West in a wagon train. It is followed by constructed-response questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; it includes: sequencing, making inferences, describing character traits, finding main idea, and summarizing. This passage aligns with Common Core Anchor Reading Standards 1 requiring close reading, textual evidence, main idea, and summarizing.