Thanks for the response guys
I guess I should accept that there won't be a dynamite solution that makes all my problems go away.
The answer, as usual, is going to be hard work. So we'll continue with the rental plan and maybe come up with a special deal if we need to go get someone in there.
As far as the mortgage goes, I'm still leaning towards the interest-only loan (at least to start) to keep it from producing negative cash flow. If we could do that for a couple of years, and let the housing market come back around, I think we'd be able to refinance it then into a 30 yr loan. But I will follow your advice and run the numbers on a couple of traditional mortgage plans to see what we can do there.
Thanks again for the help.