Gun laws, taxes, crime and traffic are what we are attempting to get away from so WA looks just like Mommie-fornia, only cooler.
What about Anacortes?
Well, Anacortes is in Washington so it won't get you away from the state's determined pursuit of progressive policies. Western Washington, specifically King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties which I believe carry more voting weight than the rest of the state's counties combined, is extremely liberal. For example they've created gun-free zones (where ironically several of the recent daily shootings have occurred) and the state is firmly in the camp of bigger government is better because government knows better than you do. In Washington, minorities rule, be they race, gender, cultural or religious minorities. In fact, the smaller the minority the more attention, money, laws, and protection it gets from the state, often at the expense of the majority.
What Anacortes
does buy you is away from the Seattle-Bellevue-Redmond sorry-ass mess. It also gets you out of King County and their ludicrous taxes on just about everything.
Anacortes is a very nice town with a long history and an active and interesting waterfront including a substantial shipyard that builds cool stuff. It has one of the best marine hardware stores on the planet. There are several marinas in the town, the large city-owned marina and several private ones.
They have an annual arts fair where they close off the main street for a weekend and have all sorts of artist booths, good live music, and food stands. This year's was two weekends ago and we took the boat down for a Friday-Sunday visit and bought some cool stuff for the boat and the house.
There are a number of very good marine services in Anacortes if you need something fixed.
Anacortes has some very good restaurants if you're into dining out.
The town is not very far from the Mount Vernon/Burlington commercial corridor along I-5 so there is plenty of good shopping available--- Costco, etc--- a short drive away.
For a boater Anacortes is a great spot to be as it's on the doorstep of the San Juans and on up into the Gulf Islands in BC and if one has the time and inclination, right on up into SE Alaska.
The only downside I can think of to the place is all the ferries to the San Juan Islands and Sidney, BC leave from there, so you can get some pretty long lines of tourists and other ferry-goers snaking through town at times.
I have no idea how Anacortes stacks up in terms of housing prices and cost of living against other communities in western Washington.