Mary,
I live in the Methow Valley in north central Washington, on the east side of the cascades. We are pretty close to the mountains here at elevation 1600', so we get a little more snow than some areas. I have noticed such a change in the weather patterns during the 20 some years we have lived here. Our winters are much milder with a couple degrees below zero for a few days the new norm, as opposed to a couple weeks of minus 20 years ago. I love the warm summers, so that isn't an issue for me, but if you don't like heat, you will want to be careful about what area you think about moving to. I have not noticed the summers getting any hotter over these years, however. It seems to me that anywhere on the Columbia river, the climate is a little more temperate, probably due to the giant body of 50ยบ water to moderate things.
I moved from the west side of the state and had to learn to garden in an area where you don't just take it for granted that everything you throw in the ground will thrive and get twice as big as the tag says. My soil is somewhat sandy, alkaline, and needed a little tender loving care to make it rich and fertile. I can grow a wide variety of plants here, I just need to pay attention to how hardy they are and make sure they don't mind the alkalinity. Artemisias and other silver leafed plants seem to do especially well here, but I also have beautiful hostas and other lush shade plants on the east side of my house in addition to many different sun loving perennials.
The pests are not overwhelming where I live - we used to have a lot of problems with deer, but you are probably used to that up in Alaska. Our local deer population has decreased significantly in recent years due to the introduction of wolves nearby and wildfires. Grasshoppers will eat their fill some years and we get pretty healthy tomato worms once in awhile. Mosquitos can be bad, depending on where you live, but probably not as bad as what you are used to, as well as yellow jackets.
Good luck!
