This may not appeal to you if you're dead set on an urban atmosphere, but it ticks many of your other boxes and might be useful to anyone else considering Washington... the Olympic Peninsula. Of which Sequim, mentioned above, is a part. There are other towns on the OP, and each has its own sort of culture. Another town to consider is Port Townsend, which is small but vibrant, with a nice little downtown area on the water.
I don't live in Sequim or PT, but I do live on the OP, and I drive to the airport once or twice a month. I don't find the drive cumbersome at all. There's no traffic until you get pretty close to the airport, and I've only experienced bad traffic if I happen to be passing through during rush hour. It's not a short drive, but it's low-stress, so I just put on some podcasts and go.
My husband and I moved to the OP from Phoenix a couple of years ago, and we pinch ourselves on a regular basis. The area is gorgeous, and the changing weather (daily and seasonally) is awesome. Trees for miles, mountains, water views. Driving home from the airport over the Hood Canal bridge, you get a breathtaking view of the Olympic mountains beyond the water and now, to us, it feels like the gateway to home.
My husband is a a city boy, having grown up in Phoenix, but he has found that he loves living more remotely. YMMV, but he has really blossomed outside the city.
I hike the same beautiful mountain trail every day just for general fitness, which is so nice compared to the sidewalk runs I used to do in Phoenix. And of course there are tons of other hikes within easy reach when I have more time. Blackberries are so abundant that they're considered a nuisance, but we allow some to grow on our property so we can pick a dozen or so gallons of them each summer and freeze them. There's also a beautiful berry farm in Sequim where you can pick your own raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, loganberries, and lavender. Berries are $2.50/pound. Each town of any reasonable size has a farmer's market. There's a great health food co-op in PT. There are wineries, cideries, breweries, and distilleries for those so inclined. Plenty of unique and delicious non-chain restaurants. PT has a great coffee shop called Better Living Through Coffee. You can sit outside or by the window, right over the water, and watch the seals swim by the shore. Sequim has most of the big box stores you might need/want, whereas PT is more mom-and-pop stuff, though it does have a Safeway and a big hardware store.
The cost of living is not dirt cheap, but it's miles better than SF, although I guess that's true for most places. In our case, for the cost of a standard 3-4 bedroom house in Phoenix on a postage stamp of land, we now have 3 acres and a view to die for.
Whatever you choose, welcome to Washington! It's a really fantastic state.
