The next day was Ascension Day, and we hoped to reach some town in time for a service, but difficulties beset us from the first. I had to get some gasolene out of the side tanks, and this meant siphoning it, an exceedingly unpleasant performance, no less than sucking it through a tube to start the flow. Then the electric starter went wrong, and the engine was terribly hard to crank, as the starting-handle had not been used. At last we were off, but the trail was heavy with sand, and the engine got very hot and presently stuck fast at a hill. I found that the fan had gone wrong again, and took it down, and while trying to put it right found that a nut had not been properly adjusted. A man came along in a car and at once went to my aid. Then two more men came by and also stopped to help, and when we had adjusted the fan they all three pushed the van off and we went up the hill. But our troubles were not over yet. An immense hole, about five feet deep, yawned across our path as we topped the hill, and there was nothing for it but to plunge through it and down the hill beyond. The caravan swayed so violently that I expected every moment that we should be upset, but it always righted itself just in time, though everything on the shelves was hurled to the floor--a continual occurrence until we put up the netting. The sand was so thick here that we got on to a grass track beside the trail, hoping for better going, but this soon ended, and we had to bump back on to the trail again. In so doing we stuck fast in the ditch. By racing the engine I got her out, but we soon stuck fast again, this time up to our axles in sand. After we had tried in vain for an hour to get the car out, we gave it up and sat down by the roadside to read the service for the day in our prayer-books. It was easy to enter into the spirit of the festival out there on the wide prairie, with its immense distances and glorious blue sky. We were about thirty miles from any house. After a time we started to dig out the wheels with our hands, but just then two of the men who had helped us before came back along the trail. "How many more times shall we have to help you two girls out of a hole?" they cried, and with much good nature proceeded to assist us, until at last, with reversing and pushing and putting our blankets under the wheels, we got out. We had to go half a mile back and along another trail, but at last reached Verdun. We only did twenty-seven miles that day.