It’s pretty unnerving to see when you have no idea what you are seeing.
After a late start and with a VW van full of talkative, high energy boys, our teacher became exhausted by many hours of driving. In the middle of the night, he pulled over on the side of the road in south Florida for a quick nap. As far as we could tell, we were in the middle of nowhere and it was dark enough that we all expected to soon fall asleep for a few hours.
Within minutes though, one of our group noticed bright lights hovering in the distance. Was it a UFO, we joked? We watched as the lights got brighter and brighter and soon passed overhead with a roar. What was it? A UFO, by definition, at least.
When it happened again, I realized what was going on and announced my theory. We checked our maps and confirmed that by bad luck, we had parked directly in the flight path of the Miami airport. The new miracles of aviation -- 747s -- were passing overhead with their landing lights on, every ten minutes or so.
No rest for the weary, so we pressed on and spent the night at a cheap Cuban motel in Hialeah that had pay radio but no TV. Then to the Everglades for four days of camping and photography.