I was driving my family west on US 58 at about 3:30pm; I don���t know the exact time. It was a bright and relatively clear day. Something in the sky slightly ahead and to the north caught my attention. I couldn���t make out what is was at first, so I tried to observe it as closely and often as I could considering that I had to watch the road and that some roadside power lines obscured my view. It was metallic gray in color and appeared to have more mass in the center and possibly some sort of rim. I tried to match it to common plane types, but I couldn���t. It was closer than a jet and had no contrail (though a jet at low altitude on ascent or descent wouldn���t have one, I guess���but the nearest jet-supporting airport is 60 miles away). Yet it was grayer than most prop planes I���ve seen from our local airport, and I couldn���t make out any wings. It traveled ahead of us smoothly and slowly. I kept trying to observe it, but I eventually lost sight of it. The entire time, I wasn���t able to definitively call it an airplane, though it could well have been. I joked with my family that it could have been a UFO. They weren't able to see this or the next object, however, I guess because of the way we were seated and the available windows.A few minutes later as I continued driving west, I spotted a bright, yellowish-white short streak in the sky roughly in the direction the object was going. I immediately thought it must have been a jet after all and had reached a cruising altitude and produced a contrail. This image was in the southwestern sky near the afternoon sun but lower and slightly north. I continued to try and observe the object and soon noticed that it didn���t change shape or move. Taking a longer look, it appeared to be a very bright rod-shaped object in a slightly slanted upright position. A yellowish-white radiance or cloud immediately surrounded the brighter interior. I soon lost sight of this object because of the trees.We stopped at a local business to look around. About 15 minutes later we started back for home, traveling east. After we made a turn onto US 29 North, I glanced back at the western sky and noticed the bright object again. It did not appear to have moved from its former position.I don���t know if the two objects were associated, and the first one could well have been a plane. The second bright object really has me wondering, though. I would like to find out if some sort of cosmic event, such as a supernova or planetary alignment, caused that bright object, as it appeared to be as fixed in the sky as a star at night (in fact, I jokingly told my family that it could be the star of Bethlehem). That���s hard to imagine, though, since it was still broad daylight and the object was near the sun.