Looks like it could be Freshwater Bay (Mouth of the Elwha river).

Wow, I had no idea.

Only 2,625'? Mountains are definitely a sometimes thing in WA, huh?

My hometown back East (ie: NC) was at 3,333' and we weren't even the tallest incorporated town in the county (it was at 5,506').

Jokes aside, I went through Waterville this past April. The the passes closed unexpectedly due to the late snow storm on my way back West from camping at Steamboat Rock SP, but Snoqualmie closed first, so we were heading for Stevens. The winds were pretty extreme and were causing a decorative trim piece on the roof on my motorhome to flap loudly. I ended up parking next to the hedge at the Exxon station in order to climb on the roof and investigate, .. so that if the wind blew me off I'd at least land on something slightly forgiving.

Beautiful area. The drive on US 2 from Coulee City is impressive. Loads of glacial erratics. Nice descent to Orondo down that canyon, too.

Out of sight, out of mind. My understanding is that while it has always been prevalent, it wasn't really identified officially as being prevalent in the American wilderness until the 1970s (when researchers went looking for it).

It's a coastal thing. The majority of the East Coast is the same way.

I finished the audiobook today. I loved it, even though I'd strongly suspected the twist from the beginning. >!The layout. The insect sighting. The gravity. The lack of windows or any interest in mapping the changing stars. The 'too fast for communication' yet still clearly going well below light speed. They were all clues.!< The different voices and accents in the audiobook are both well done and betray a few convergences of the stories a little earlier than the prose.

While I don't expect a book like this to be universally praised, I was shocked to see how divisive the takes are. Very few folks were just mildly amused with it. I did notice a theme where negative review's didn't finish it (and I'm someone who will DNF a book I'm not enjoying with little hesitation, no hate). It's definitely a lot of unrelated buildup that starts clicking together like a mystery novel in the final chapters, so quitting early just means no payoff.

The characters' trials and suffering were interesting and engaging for me, but the events unfolding in the Idaho library were what got me hooked enough to stick with getting into the characters.

Ackchyually... OP is attempting to name them after the National Forest Service anti-fire mascot. The word for an area infested with smoke is 'smoky'.

The Great Smoky Mountains

Smokey the Bear.

That said, since this is the kind of pedantic nonsense people don't care to commit to memory, we could go with the absurd option: call them The Misty (or Steamy) Mountains.

The Great Smokies are named due to the daily mists rising out of what's technically a temperate rainforest. We may as well equally misrename the Cascades so that generations can scratch their head in bemusement. (Yes, I know that parts of the Cascades are temperate rainforests as well.. but the Smokies don't have a dry season).

https://reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/y18u11/my_boyfriend_told_me_this_was_just_the_top_of_his/

That's OP's side chick.