Dustin - Do you realize that after you do the Trace Bitmap in Inkscape that the Trace and the Original are overlaid? If you click & release on the picture, then hold the mouse button down and drag, the Trace will move and the original stay where it was. That way you can try different settings to see what looks best (keep dragging the trace away from the original.
When you get a trace you like, drag the original out of the outline box, drag the best trace into the outline box, and save as an SVG. Load the SVG into Gimp to clean up speckles etc. then save as a GIF, JPG, or PNG file.