During Christmas, I have been traveling and the landlord promised me he would have cleaned the carpet while I was gone.

Many owners give instructions as to how they want to review offers, which often means you won't hear a response for 2-3 days in most circumstances, longer if the owner is travelling or overwhelmed with the process.

I'm wondering if it might be worth it to give up some of the cash flow, in order to free myself up for travel, etc?

Be prepared to travel there and get feel for it, and that costs money (at least it did last time I checked). 

In my personal case, I like to travel around and probably only spend an average of a few months a year in my own bed, but it's still my primary residence.If you're legitimately going to leave it vacant for a year, you could make the argument that it's your main home, but to cover yourself, you should lay down as many arguments as possible as to how this is your real home.

We use a Marriott card and then use the points for rooms/upgrades when we travel. 

This means you need to budget money & time for periodic travel into the market of interest.  

An STR is very basically an alternative to a hotel, so if the market supports hotel and motels in a given geography, you can be fairly confident your STR would work, especially as you consider the changing demographics of travelers, i.e. younger and more interested in experience vs. strictly convenience. 

While you try and justify a way to get the storage containers there, the minute you start collecting rent on them as storage units word will travel fast and most likely you will get shut down.

She travels half the year teaching others how to be successful in real estate.