Part of the reason that I moved to Bellingham, WA, is that we have ocean, lakes, rivers, islands, waterfalls, mountains, forests, volcanoes, etc. all within one hour...and really it's just about all within 10 minutes of my front door. Exception would be the ski resort, which is more like 1 hour 20 minutes. The beaches, of course, are not sunny SoCal beaches if that's what you're looking for.
However, LCOL it is not. Cheaper than the Seattle area or coastal CA, but trending toward the high part of what I would consider MCOL.
Now, if you were ok with being outside of the city, you could save a fair bit on housing and still have most of the same access to nature. There are tradeoffs, of course, but there's essentially no traffic to deal with anywhere in the county (or the adjacent one).