You are basically describing the same thing my dad and brothers described they saw. It seems to me this was all happening before the sun set. Be interesting if there was a way to pull up any accounts of it in the papers in Montgomery at the time. When did this happen to you and your friends—60’s, 70’s?
It was my brother and sister with me and it was the summer of 67. Maybe 8pm.
My wife and saw a bright light in the Arizona sky. All of a sudden it took off so fast that it left a “light trail” to the eye. We saw several do this within a few minutes. And we saw one that was rotating and little blinking lights came from the bottom and then would float upward and out of sight. After about ten of “these” came out the bright white light took off and disappeared from sight in no more than a second.
Doubters can also see what Travis (can’t remember his last name) from the movie Fire in the Sky had to say. All involved in that took and passed a lie detector test. He was gone for several days and when he was found he was naked and cowering on a front porch of some closed store. Very believable.