Sphere shaped object about the size of a water tower, spinning rapidly.

I remember the night very vividly and I am pretty sure about the date because it was the day before school started back.  My mother and I were riding home from the grocery store and as we approached the road we lived on we noticed a big redish/orange sphere above the trees.  At first we thought it was the moon because sometimes when the moon rises it looks red, but we marveled at how big it was.
As we got closer we noticed that it wasn't the moon and it was hovering about 30 feet above the tree line right where we had to turn.  Well, as we turned down our road the object was on the passenger side where I was sitting and I got very good look at it.  It was about the size of the top of a water tower and it was spinning very rapidly, it had the same texture as you see in pictures of a glowing hot sun, and vapor was shooting off of it as it spun.  
I was 8 years old at the time and I remember going to school the next day and telling my teacher and other students in the class what I saw because I was sure one of them had seen it too... unfortunatly none of them had seen it and found the story very amusing...lol 
The object was seen by me and my mother in Clayton off of Powhatan Rd. and Davis Rd.  David Rd is now Glen Laurel Rd.