Spotted aluminum-colored square-shaped blinking lights which disappeared, car stopped & red/orange ball followed us.

In September 1980, I was driving from San Jose, CA to Denver, CO along with my son and our two dogs.  As we were approaching Elko, Nevada, I saw a sign that said Elko 18 miles straight ahead and a road that went off to the right and straight up the mountain.  I mentioned to my son that the road looked like an interesting one to explore and that we should come back later (we had planned to spend the night in Elko) and do just that.
We set up camp in a park on the edge of Elko, ate and then took the dogs with us and set out to explore that curious road.
It was getting dark as we headed out and was very dark by the time we got up in the mountain.  It was very quiet, very dark and very desolate up there and we decided to abandon our search and turned around and headed back down the mountain.
My son was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat and the two dogs were in the back.  Suddenly, off to my right a bright light caught my eye.  Both my son and I said at the same time "did you see that?"  It looked like a huge billboard type of thing with aluminum colored glowing squares that were blinking in some strange kind of pattern.  The minute we noticed it, it stopped blinking and disappeared.  I mean disappeared completely as though nothing at all had been there.  There was just an empty meadow where this thing had been.  The altimeter  ((sic.  Please see below.)) light came on in the car and the engine stopped running.  So I told my son to turn the car off and we would sit there for awhile.  Soon we heard foot steps coming toward the car which unnerved us to say the least.  But strangest of all was that the dogs did NOT bark.  I got worried and thought it was best to get out of there and told my son to start the car and let's go!  He reminded me that the car wouldn't start and I just told him to try again--it would start (I was kind of frantic).
The car did start and we started down the mountain again, but by then I was regaining my composure and told him to go slow, real slow.  I turned around to look and there was an reddish-orangeish round light floating above the road (maybe 10 or l5 feet above)and it followed us down the mountain, almost to the bottom and then disappeared.
When we got back to the campground it was around 2:30 in the morning so I do not know where all the time went as it didn't seem that we were up there for very long.  When we got back we were sitting outside, still in amazement over what we had seen when I looked up and there I was about 5 green lights and they were in some sort of formation that looked to me as though they were dancing to some sort of celestial music!  I know how improbable that sounds, especially after what we had just seen on the mountain, but I swear to God it is the truth.  We were not stoned, not drunk and not crazy.  Straight and totally in awe!
((FOLLOW-UP REPORT FROM WITNESS))
correction to  12/15/03 report
On December 15, 2003, I submitted a report in which I said "the car's 'altimeter' light came on".  What I meant to say was 'alternator light'.
((END))
Date is approximate.  PD