TERRAPIN CREEK — Odds are, the story of how Kevin Hand ended up in Cherokee County last week is more interesting than the tale of how many of the rest of us got here.

One of the delivery drivers for The Post, an avid outdoorsman, bumped into Hand during a Memorial Day 2012 paddle trip down Terrapin Creek. At some point during the day, the two struck up a conversation. Suffice it to say that the laidback, soft-talking Louisianan made an impression.

“You need to go talk to that guy,” our driver said when he called our office May 29 to suggest an interview. “He's fascinating.”

Two days later, Hand, 49, was kind enough to take a few minutes from his temporary job at Terrapin Creek Outdoors to tell us a little bit about how he came to be in Cherokee. After listening to what Hand had to say, we weren't sure if “fascinating” was a big enough word.

Actually, Hand has been in Cherokee County before. He worked at Terrapin Creek Outdoors for a short time in 2010, prior to embarking on a months-long trip in late September to—

Hold on. Stop. It's better if we let him tell the story.

“I bought a canoe from these guys and I had heard about the Alabama Scenic River Trail,” Hand says in between sips of ice water as he sits in the shade relaxing, most of another hard day's work behind him. “I started up here and I was going to do the Trail and see what happened.”

Over a month later, Hand found himself floating across the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico. That's right—the Gulf of Mexico. Something inside told Hand his journey wasn't over.

“I got to the end of the Alabama Scenic River Trail in about 45 days and then I went down the Intracoastal Waterway to Apalachicola, Florida,” he says. “By then it was cold.”

Hand paused for the winter, working odd jobs and camping at public parks. When the sun began its climb back to the top of the noontime sky in March 2011, Hand dragged his canoe into the Gulf.

“I paddled, like an Indian, all the way down to Key West,” Hand says. “It took about nine months. It was about 1,800 miles with the side trips. I reached Molasses Key on June 12.”

Ask Hand what he was thinking by taking such a long, strange trip and there's a simple, logical answer.

“I like to travel,” he says. “And if you were going to do that trip and stay in hotels and such, it would be very expensive. That's why people don't take those trips. It's cost prohibitive.”

Hand, whose most recent “full-time” job was last winter on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, labels himself “semi-retired.”

“I have always gotten paid to work on boats and I always went where people told me to go,” Hand says. Referring to the canoe trip, he smiles and adds, “It's nice to get in my own boat and do my own thing.”

After spending last summer on the crew of a catamaran in the Keys, Hand decided it was time to head back up the peninsula.

All the way up—on two self-propelled wheels.

“I rode that bicycle over there,” Hand says, pointing to a top-of-the-line model parked by the hammock where he sleeps while working for the folks at Terrapin Creek. “I rode right up the edge of the Everglades and up through the lake region. I had already been past both coasts, so I chose the route I hadn't taken yet—straight through the middle.”

By the time the weather turned cold again, Hand had made his way back to Apalachicola—where friends he had made on his way down in the canoe welcomed him.

“I spent the winter on the beach, living and working at the house of the guy who owned the yacht I had worked on in Key West,” he says. “That worked out pretty good.”

When March rolled around again, Hand got his two wheels rolling north, back towards Cherokee County.

“I wanted to do the Chief Ladiga Trail—that was part of the plan for coming full circle,” Hand says. “I also rode the Silver Comet trail almost to Atlanta, then came back here.”

Hand says the trip to Key West was his first-ever canoe trip. But it's clear from a half-hour of stories that it likely won't be his last.

The former Marine's first taste of the sea came at 28, as part of a sailboat crew that journeyed from South Carolina to Barbados. Since then, he has driven all the way across Mexico on a four-wheeler and fished for crab on the Bering Sea in Alaska.

Hand has biked his way around the Hawaiian Islands. He's crossed the Atlantic to Italy, too, and made his way across France. The money Hand earned as an engineer on a yacht kept him footloose and financially free whenever he felt too many untraveled miles remained.

“I spent a lot of time in Europe then decided I wanted to come home and see my parents for a while. I was going to stay home a month,” Hand recalls. “In less than a week I was ready to go again.”

Hand doesn't know exactly where he'll be next month or next year. But he has a list of trips he'd like to take and sights he'd like to see before he amends his status as a “semi” retired member of society.

“I don't have a schedule, really, I just kind of point and go,” he says. “I'm hoping to bike the Natchez Trace Scenic Parkway and make it back down to New Orleans by the fall, at the latest.”

For next spring, he's got his eye on an off-road bike trail in New Mexico.

“It's a gravel trail and it goes all the way up the Continental Divide,” Hand says. “From there my plan would be to make my way over to Seattle and canoe the Inside Passage all the way up to Alaska, about 2,000 miles. Then, I'd like to get a snowmobile and travel across north Alaska.”

Hand admits he'll miss the hospitality here in Cherokee County. But he says it's the tinge of regret he feels every time he leaves his latest temporary home that keeps him moving towards his next destination—wherever that may be.

“These people here have been great to me since the day I met them,” he says. “That's what traveling is about—meeting people and spending time with them.”