Brilliant vertical ring of lights moved silently and slowly over lake, then turned, illuminating the surrounding hills.

At 2:00am on a warm August night, my then ten year old son and I drove a few miles from our home in Greenville to Round Valley Lake to meet a friend(i'll call him Frank) for a night of catfishing.  It is a very twisty winding road for just a few miles to the lake.  About a mile before we got to the lake, my son, sitting in the front passenger seat, said “dad, is that a full moon out?”  I leaned over to look and saw a brilliant white light about a quarter mile away across a canyon and behind the trees on the ridge.  I thought it must be a full moon and told my son “looks like it” and kept driving not thinking anything else about it.  Around a minute later, we turned to go across the small dam at the lake, drove maybe 100 yards and almost hit my friend Frank who was walking fast towards us in the middle of the road.  I stopped fast, and could tell something was wrong.  Franks eyes were wide open, and he was yelling something before I could even roll my window down to ask him what he was doing in the middle of the road.  The first thing I heard him yelling was “Did you see it?  Did you see it?  Did you see the F***ing light?”  I had known Frank about 7 years at that time, and had never seen him act anything like this before.  I shut off my engine, and turned off the lights on my jeep, got out and said “What light?  I saw the full moon.....”  I looked up to see the full moon, but it was a moonless night.
Just then, Frank said “LOOK…….there it is”.  That’s when we all 3 saw it going away from us, going slightly right to left through Long Valley, just North of the lake we were standing at.  It was silent, and very bright white.  It moved slowly, perhaps 10 MPH about 100 feet above the ground lighting up the surrounding hills as it moved along.  From there it just moved towards the West and within a few minutes was gone.
Catfishing was good that night after all.
Frank told us that it was a ring of lights, some different colored ones, and mostly white lights all around the circle, and came across the lake towards him with the circle or ring standing vertically, and made absolutely no sound.  He was talking very fast and very excited about it all night, which is not like him at all.
Witness indicates that date of incident is approximate.  PD