Joe, Here is the original with no adjustments at all. I bumped up the contrast by adding a curves adjustment layer (don't change anything, just click OK), then set the blend to soft light or hard light and adjust the opacity until you get the contrast you want.
I then used the healing tool on a new layer and I did most of my smoothing on a new layer using the brush with opacity set to 25% and flow set to 25%, sampling the color next to where I wanted to smooth. Then just work at it slowly resampling the color when you move to a different area of the image. Hope that helps, Joe.