@boomerang,
In Oregon, I've only been to Eugene, and that was a long time ago, but I liked it.
I remember that it wasn't a terribly long drive to either the shore or the mountains. Have flown into Portland and out again a couple of times, beautiful flight.
I have my own irritation with myself for not moving to a southern Oregon area instead of New Mexico. Not that I've researched all that, but at the point I needed to move and find a small place I could possibly afford and picked New Mexico, I lived only 80 miles south of the border so I'm sort of familiar with the climate. (I miss my ocean.) I generally like things I read about Oregon, except that even worse than northern californians dislike southern californians, a lot seem to strongly dislike californians as a group. Yawn.
I like Seattle, but the traffic is nutso, at least in some areas. I stayed overnight once in Spokane (puddle jump flight when I was going to Idaho) and walked around a few hours, liked it well enough but that was a really quick look.