ME:
This part of the US is definitely worth a visit. We just love it. My sister, who still lives in Leyland, Lancs says "it's where God goes on holiday". She also said it's the only place we've lived in ths US that she's jealous of.
Anacortes ia a small town (about 18,000) where, as a friend of mine who was brought up here said. "If you got into trouble on the way home from school, your mother knew about it before you got home".
It's the gateway to the San Juan Islands, a group of several hundred islands, most of which are too small to support human life. We have a ferry system that links four of the bigger ones and it's a revelation to take a car on the boat and go exploring. Taking an RV is expensive.
As I said before, the climate is very familiar to British people. While it's been in the upper 80's fahrenhesit in some places in Washington today, we topped out at about 69. The bay off shore where we live (in the chaper houses that aren't waterfront) is about 60 fathoms deep and is primarily melted snow run-off. 5 minutes up to your knees in the water and you can't feel your feet any more, even just 20 feet off the beach. Our two Labradors love it. Of course, we get the claggy grey days in winter - 800' scattered. 1500' overcast rain and fog, which can last a couple of weeks at a time, but it rarely snows and we don't get many days with a high below 32F.
Frankly, we wouldn't swap it for anywhere else in the US. We lived in Tidewater Virginia for three miserable years. The first day I went to work at NASA, at 07:00, it was 85F, foggy amd thundering and lightning. It didn't get any better. Most summer days, we'd get a 3 p.m. thunderstorm that dumped 3" of rain in 45 minutes. NASA guys would tease me about coming from Seattle where "it rains all the time". My response was "it can rain for 24 hours straight and we get 0.25".
We had one afternoon thunderstorm that stayed overnight and dumped 13" of rain in 10 hours. A local railway underpass filled up enough to float the bridge off its pilings. Never was I so glad to leave a place and head back to the Northwest!
