My most amazing husband and I landed in Maui shortly after 3 pm, following an 8-hour plane ride. The smiles had been creeping onto our faces over the previous hours, but now they settled in permanently! After all the usual airport routines, we shoved our luggage into a Mustang convertible and hit the road for ... Wal Mart! Maybe not the most exciting first destination, but we wanted to buy beach towels, I needed eye drops for my contact lenses (they'll get  a little more use than most days since I forgot my glasses at home), and sunglasses for my hubby since he left his in our car back on the mainland.

The drive was beautiful. We rounded the West Maui volcano and followed the shoreline for several miles. As we rounded the west side of the volcano, I looked up to see a rainbow in the clouds. Faint and ethereal, it added a magical feel to my first impressions of the island.

When we arrived at our hotel, we received a traditional lei greeting. And the view from our room - WOW!

We set out for something to eat - even though by this point it was about 9:00 pm at home, we knew that a dinner at dinnertime here would help us to stay up until something closer to bedtime and enjoy our first evening here. And what better than a simple meal on the hotel terrace facing the sunset and listening to a Hawaiian singer seranading us with mellow Hawaiian and other beach music?

At one point during dinner, I realized I was singing along with a song that I remembered from about 30 years ago: Pearly Shells. It's not a song that most would recognize unless they listened to Don Ho music back in the '70s. But my sister and I took Hula lessons for years when we were children, and that was a song that we danced for a recital. Since our recitals were every other year, we must have worked on that dance for close to two years.

After dinner, we walked in the twilight by the shore and watched the stars come out. The waning moon was on its way towards setting, a treasured moment for two people who have always appreciated God's creations in the sky as well as on land (and sea).