I was heading north on hwy 1 just after the sun went down in southern Mendocino County on Monday August 22, 2011 at 8:25pm. There were a few clouds on the lower horizon and the rest of the sky was clear except what looked like a con trail way up above the clouds to the right of the sun over the ocean. At first I thought it was a missile. I pulled over and lost track of the con trail because it quickly disappeared. As I scanned the sky again and found the object. Now there were two con trails close together and the object rose at a steady rate up into the sky higher and higher until it vanished into the blue sky. The event lasted no more than 5 minutes. I thought it might be a rocket sent into space, but from where would it have been launched? I've never seen any space launches from the North coast of California. No news of any space launch that I know of was deployed on Monday night. No other jets or helicopters appeared so I drove on north.