You might utilize these extra cash for a down payment on a different house.Another good alternative is seller financing, which may be arranged directly with the seller and may entail a down payment and interest-bearing payments of the remaining amount over time.

In addition, being local would help me get my bearing the the real estate world.

Learn what the current market bears for a loan product for a borrower with your profile - exp, credit history.  

Bear in mind you will still owe depreciation recapture tax for depreciation deductions you took while operating it as a rental. 

When I invest, I mostly want to know about the failures and losses and what they did to mitigate them as any fool can make money in a Bull market but what you want is someone who loses less in a Bear or bad real estate market.

Same goes for number of LLCs and what to fund them with, since bear in mind that CA tends to be more cumbersome and expensive to have LLCs than other states.California is generally more cumbersome than other states when it comes to taxes and filings.

Big bear, Branson, etc. 

The only thing that saved me was that I paid with no interest-bearing CCs.

We all have our cross to bear.

For example if you Google "Cabins in Big Bear" a direct booking site ranks #1.