Scariest Night Of My Life

30th October 2016, was probably the scariest night of my life.

Back when I was I living in the UK I would travel a lot for work, but I was young, single and didn't worry about anyone but myself.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm married with a young daughter. I'm in a different chapter of my life, my job has changed and I've settled down. When I decided to go full time as a stock photographer I wanted to kick it off with a month long trip away from my family to the US. My plan was to spend10 Days in LA, then spend a couple of weeks driving cross country to Austin, then return via a different route.

I was doing the road trip with a buddy of mine who lives in LA and is also a full time stock photographer. We were going to use his old Dodge Caravan, which he'd pimped out with a mattress in the back for these type of trips. We planned our route of all the places we'd like to stop and set off on the road. The morning of the 30th we woke up to a beautiful cloudless sky in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona.

After shooting some sunrise photos we headed on towards our next stop, the Very Large Array (The huge astronomy observatory that you may recognise from the movie Contact or the home of skynet in Terminator Salvation.) By time we were heading through the Gila Forest it was dark and late. We'd been driving and stopping off all day and we were starting to get tired. My friend drifted off in the passenger seat as I drove. I had the high beams on on the car but there was nothing for the light to bounce off so i could only see a short way into the distance. As I came round a corner something caught my eye to the right of the road. It was huge, it looked like an atat walker from Star wars. It took me a second to register just exactly what it was, it was a bull elk. Still to this day the biggest animal I've ever seen in the wild. In that split second that it took me to register what it was it'd moved from the side of the road to right in my path. Luckily I wasn't going too fast having just come round the corner so I was able to swerve, but it was too little too late.

In that split second I knew we were about to hit him and there was nothing we could do about it. Everything went black, it was like a scene in a movie when a plane is crashing. I remember thinking I'd killed my friend as he was in the side that got hit the worst. It was a split second but it seemed to last forever. Luckily he wasn't dead and just ended up with a few cuts from the broken glass. The elk was actually so big that we'd gone straight underneath him main body, and swept his legs from under it. He rolled over the roof and kicked the back window on his way down. Also because he was tall there wasn't much damage to the front of the car so the airbags hadn't been set off.

After we rolled to a stop, we got out to asses the damage the only words I could say were "I have a daughter", I couldn't stop thinking about how easily that could've gone so badly and she'd would've been left without a father.

Luckily for us a local woman was driving the opposite way a few minutes later and she called the local police for us. We waited for about an hour for the police officer to turn up. He told us that it was his night off but there was only two officers in the local town and the deputy was off dealing with another elk accident. Assuming the elk was laying hurt somewhere he put on his leather gloves, jumped in his truck and went to look for the elk. "No point wasting good meat" he said, as he drove off. After a few minutes he returned unable to find where the elk.

When the officer returned we asked him how much longer the tow truck would take, and he looked at us dumbfounded. "What tow truck?, Your engine still runs, right? Albuquerque is only 170 miles away, you can get it fixed there."

So we got back in the car and drove off. The windscreen was destroyed, and the back side window was all missing so it created a wind tunnel as we drove, and there was glass all over the seats. As we got close to VLA we decided we were tired and instead of carrying on to Albuquerque we would camp for the night then carry on in the morning.

The car had been outfitted with a mattress over the back seat area, so we slept in the car. It was one of the coldest nights of my life, so i don't think either of us slept particularly well, add to that all the adrenaline running through our veins. I wanted to call my wife and tell her i was ok, and i wanted to hear my daughters voice, but we were in the middle of nowhere with zero signal.

In the morning we had some breakfast and continued the remaining 120ish miles to Albuquerque stopping to call our wives as soon as we got signal. We were stranded in the city for the next few days whilst we had a quick and cheap repair job done on the car so we could set off on the road again.

Next stop White sands National Monument

My buddy Hal not looking impressed

The morning after (the night before)

*Disclaimer- I am a full time stock photographer for Getty Images/ iStock. So if you reverse image search yes that will show up, but i have verified (On multiple occasions with @steemcleaners) that i am the owner of these photos.

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