Your help was really great! Thanks! Digman and AbnRanger (RLTW).
I retopoed some areas and added more details in the problem areas. With the poles, are you saying that because 5 lines intersect in that area, then that's what causing the white artifacts / crackly lines? This is what I'm getting.
Here's what my retopos look like
Lastly, the sphere normal baking helped in some areas. That is so cool. Is this unique to 3d Coat? And is am I supposed to use XNormal (I'm on a Mac). There's a lot of people saying that's the goto for normal baking, but I don't really know objectively how to compare since I'm still learning.
Thanks!