blogs for a friend

I'm trying to come up with a list of some blogs to get a friend started -- he's a great writer, and sends out travelogues to people via email. A transition to blog format would seem natural. But I'm anticipating he'll be skeptical that he would find blogs he'd like to read, or any sort of community (just as I used to be long ago). So, I'm trying to gather up some good links for him and maybe you can help -- I know I've come across some good ones in other people's blogrolls but didn't record them for myself.
My friend is a stay-at-home father, a travel writer, a former academic, married to an academic. I don't think my roll of mostly academics would interest him at this point -- still a lot of issues to be worked out. But if you know of any interesting dad blogs or travel blogs, that would be really helpful.