This was the evening of dec 17, 2016, at joshua tree national park in california. not much to see but if i tell this story i better show something. when you hear the car go by, that is how often i heard cars pass thru the night. not a ton of them. i watched this thing for seemed like an hour before i tried to get closer. i ended up driving closer with a better view: my hand is shaky at times had a hard time steadying it on the dash, but still the thing was always moving, never stayed still but seemed to gravitate to a center point: pass it by and come back moving top to bottom to right to left, but always thru a rough center point. my first thoughts were could be et but seemed more likely to be government because i had intentional disruptions that night and the following. both times they pulled up in cars with headlights on, right behind me. very unnerving when there were infinitely more other places to pull off the main road up there. the first night i pulled my eyes from the light and checked out my rearview to see if it was the park police or something. when i saw that no one was getting out of the car, i looked up and the light was gone. i think the outstanding thing about it was the kind of light it gave off. it was more like plasma or something, it was a more pure and intense light than you see on passing aircraft. i was ticked off at the car behind me and looped back to see who it was. it looked like radar from mash with his face buried in a map. the next night i came out to the park to see the sunset then stars, and didn't see a ufo type thing, but a car pulled up behind me in the middle of nowhere, and kept his lights turned out. and didnt leave, so i got out of my van, walked over to see 2 guys reading maps. they never looked up. but they got the picture and cut the lights when i started motioned a knife to the throat motion with my palm. another weird thing, i talked to the park rangers on duty at the gate both nights, and they acted like they never heard anyone ever report such things. but when i was looking up park info, hours and cost and such, i ran across this article about a lady who runs a retreat up there near the entrance, who said they see odd things in the sky all the time. that just fueled my desire to go skywatching, using my sky guide, until i had no phone communications