Changing over Island Park Reservoir, NV

The report, as filed

We were a party of 8 adults and 4 children on a pontoon boat taking a night ride on Island Park Reservoir, trying to get a glimpse of the northern lights that the news had forecasted the possibility of seeing. We had been on the water for about an hour when just over the horizon to the south we saw a string of lights. At first sight we thought they could have been Starlink but the lights began to cluster and move at different rates of speed; each moving in slightly different formations as they hovered. There were at least two dozen lights twinkling like stars as they moved. They all moved in front of a low cloud where they all independently slowed to a stop then either vanished or just blended into the stars in the background. This first encounter lasted about 5 minutes. Roughly 20 minutes later, the international space station flew bright in the sky as it headed north. Within just a few minutes we saw what we believe to be the same cluster of lights as before but directly overhead heading in the same direction as the space station. They could have been mistaken for satellites except their visibility would come and go. Their movement again was sporadic with variable speeds. As we headed back to the dock, multiple members of the party reported feeling a momentary loss of their sense of direction. We made it safely back to the dock and recounted our sighting.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #176845). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.