The Fiberglass Manifesto: SMITHEY – Everyone Travels with a Favorite Cast Iron Skillet, Right?

I’ve been thinking about Alaska a lot this week since our daughter is up there visiting friends before she heads back to college later this month.  During Hadley’s week and a half visit, she’s spending time at some of the same places that we visited together a couple of years ago as she winding up a year of living in Palmer.  Before Hadley packed up to come home, my wife flew up to spend a week with her, camping and hiking all over, and then I flew up to spend a week where we spent time in Homer fishing with friends (Part 1 and Part 2), floated the Kenai River with Outgoing Angling, and then off to Seward for hiking and exploring.  We came home with a 50 pound fish box and so many memories.  Alaska is tough to beat even though I feel like we saw just a small fraction of it over the week that I was there.

Of my wife’s handful of superpowers, finding top tier campsites and
Airbnb spots is her forte.  For Hadley and my trip, she arranged a wonderful dry cabin outside
of Homer and a small yurt in Seward for our stays.  Knowing that
over the two weeks of travel with Hadley that we’d be cooking for
ourselves quite a bit, my wife flew to Alaska with our Smithey No. 8 Chef Skillet and then
I brought it back at the end of my trip.  As Hadley was packing provisions for our week on the road, she grabbed a dozen local eggs, rhubarb jam from a roadside stand, and a loaf of sourdough bread that we made toast, breakfast sandwiches, and grilled cheese with.  

As much as I enjoy Airbnb’s, they typically have dreadful cookware, knives, and kitchen tools.  Having our own cast iron skillet and slotted spatula made camp and kitchen meals so easy and I can’t imagine a trip like this where we won’t travel with at least one (if not several) of our favorite pans and kitchen tools.  In fact, I’m working on a custom knife/tool roll that will have everything from knives, spatula, tongs, digital meat thermometer, wood cook spoon, and more, just to be fully prepared.

Here’s a few snaps from the cabin, kitchen, yurt camp, and on our forest to ocean hike.  Everything tasted as good as it looks and I can’t wait to get back someday.