My wife & I left her mother's house at around 10:00PM tonight. As we were driving down the rural gravel road, my wife saw what she thought was a "star" or a "planet" in the sky. She immediately asked me & told me to look. I DoD not see it. It had appeared & disappeared before I could see it. I immediately explained to her that it's cloudy & that it's not possible to see stars out tonight. Then, I saw a light in the distance (further east) & asked if it was what she saw. She said "yes" but that it was not that far away. I thought what I was looking at was a cell phone or radio tower, but it became evident that it wasn't because it was moving across the sky from the east to the northwest. The light was red/orange & did not pulse or anything. I kept looking for navigation lights, but did not see any. The entire object was lit. It eventually ascended slowly into the clouds & disappeared. We started driving again & saw several people outside their home looking at the sky. We stopped & spoke to them to see if we could get a better understanding of what the lights may have been. They told us that they had watched them for 20 minutes. Again, the lights made no noises whatsoever. I spent almost 10 years in the military, including 5 years in the United States Air Force. I know EXACTLY what an aircraft looks like in the sky. I cannot explain what I saw tonight. I have tried to explain this as a Chinese Lantern, drone, or an aircraft of some sort. I simply can't. Not with it changing directions, ascending & decending, etc. The part that really threw me off is the fact that the objects were completely quiet. Despite them being below the clouds & fairly close to our position on the ground.