Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelli Nakagama.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kelli. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I moved to Chicago a few years ago after growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I trade the mountains for the skyscrapers in hopes that I’d never get asked to go hiking on a date ever again. Plus I craved the city life, so I sold my car, bought a huge coat and moved to the Midwest in search of good food, good drinks and a great experience. So far, I’ve found all three.
I started my food and travel website back in 2010 when it was the answer to some serious boredom — and that was obvious on the blog. I wrote about absolutely nothing! But soon I started writing more and more about food and travel, and it evolved into something people actually read. By the time I moved to Chicago, my blog had been voted one of the top food blogs in Utah and I’d been featured on some pretty cool sites.
Now my blog focuses primarily on food, travel and whiskey, all three of my passions. I have a serious case of wanderlust and Chicago makes it easy to jet set away whenever possible. And in the meantime, I stay entertained with all the awesome stuff to do in the city. The summer here is the best and I can’t wait to live it up once it gets warm.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This is going to sound really cheesy but my biggest challenge has always been myself. I’ve always loved to write but never had a lot of confidence about what it produced. So I constantly struggle between writing passionately how I feel, trying to decide how much honesty is too much honesty, and feeling self-conscious about what people will read.
But the funny thing about that is the most intimate posts that I feel are too vulnerable, the ones that give me anxiety as I hover over that “publish” button and think that no one will read besides my mom, are the ones that people like the best.
Besides that, obviously driving traffic to my site is a constant challenge. There is a lot of really good competition here in Chicago (and online in general) and I’m just happy that anyone visits my site at all! But nothing makes me happier than when people reach out to me to say they followed my advice on a trip somewhere or to ask my personal opinion on their travel plans.
Please tell us about Whiskied Wanderlust.
Whiskied Wanderlust is a website focusing on food, travel, and of course whiskey. All of the articles revolve around one of those topics. There are restaurant reviews and guides, whiskey event recaps and how-to classes, plus endless travel articles about what to do and where to eat around the world.
There are several reoccurring themes wherever I travel that are really just me nerding out certain things. I’m a huge opera fan so I see operas wherever I can and tour the opera houses if possible, I have a huge obsession with ramen and have had it in 8 different countries, and I’m always drinking whiskey so that makes it way to articles a lot.
What sets Whiskied Wanderlust apart from the thousands of other food and travel blogs out there is my honesty. Even if I get something comped or I get invited to something on behalf of my blog, I’ll still write about it as honestly as I can. That helps everyone out. Obviously, it’s a service to my readers, but it helps the company or business improve if I let them know what I didn’t like (at least I hope!).
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memory from childhood is being in a cabin in the mountains of Utah, where my family spent every Fourth of July growing up. The cabin was owned by all of my Dad’s friends — a dozen guys who have been friends since they were about 7 years old — and every summer all of them and their families would spend holiday weekends there. There were no TVs, no phones and no clocks.
Just an acre of aspen trees, a cabin next to a tiny river, and a huge group of really close friends.
We’d sit around all day taking in the fresh air, constantly munching on food (is there any other point to being outdoors?) and at night we’d sit around a fire under a canopy of the brightest stars I’ve ever seen and tell stories. And by that I mean my dad and his friends would tell their wild stories growing up in the 60s and 70s and us kids would listen wide-eyed in disbelief and laugh til our stomachs hurt. We’d have adult versus kids water fights that often ended up inside the cabin, we road (and in my case, rolled) four-wheelers up steep mountain trails, we roasted marshmallows and got attacked by mosquitoes. And every moment of it was awesome.
Nothing brings a group together like 15 kids sharing one loft bedroom and 20 people sharing two bathrooms. Ever since the entire group as felt like one ginormous family, even though the cabin was sold years ago.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.WhiskiedWanderlust.com
- Instagram: @WhiskiedWanderlust
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/RandomActsOfKelliness
- Twitter: @WhiskiedWander
Image Credit:
Kelli Nakagama
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