I love to see people from the Philly area joining (Almost everyday now it seems).I'm no expert but I'll try to tackle your questions as best as I can.1) I don't think the area should dictate your strategy or financing options.

If the opportunity presents itself through friends and/or family, we will definitely tackle it. 

I would suggest looking up the times and places on the Utah REIA and SLREIA's websites and going to those to figure out which niche you want to tackle. 

Do you think we should bring a contractor with us on our very first visit to the property or just go by ourselves and then decide if we even want to tackle the project.

When you get ready to tackle Rainier let me know.

Welcome Steve, sounds like you have a lot going on which makes it difficult to tackle a response to.  

Any sort of help with a general approach to tackling this would be great! 

It's not the first time I hear someone express an interest in "joining forces" to tackle mobile home investing.

We'd show up at the office, ready to tackle our day and our inboxes would be flooded with your vitriol.  

@Naveen Desai I didn't tackle the eviction portion of your questions as I really didn't see it as an issue.