Welcome to the forum, @Debbie in Seattle ! I am an Idaho transplant to Alabama, and also lived in Western Washington for many years. I was in both Kent and near Auburn for a while; but the place I enjoyed the most was near Ike Kinswa Park down by Mossyrock. I miss being out where we could see Mt. Rainier, and hear the familiar saying from out there , "the Mountain is out". Have you always lived in Washington, or are you a transplant from somewhere else like I am out here ?
Yvonne, I've lived about 10 miles north of Seattle for about 40 years, prior to that, grew up in a little town in Illinois called Plainfield. My sister lives in Alabama currently, Pell City. Seattle has changed a lot, full of homeless, traffic and terribly high housing prices. The tech boom has brought the folks from San Francisco moving up here. It's so crazy developers are buying homes and building neighborhoods now and we're even seeing some folks building homes on their lots (large lots). Sadly, there is no infrastructure to support all this traffic.