Adirondacks or Outer Banks?

In the Adirondacks, swimming means lakes. You get the sandy public beaches of Lake George, the town beach on Mirror Lake and the docks along the Fulton Chain, all lovely in July and August but cold for much of the rest of the year. It is calm, freshwater lake life, with rafts and picnic tables instead of waves.

The Outer Banks are a true beach destination, with well over 100 miles of open Atlantic sand. You can choose between the lifeguarded town beaches of Kitty Hawk and Nags Head and the empty dunes of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The surf and rip currents need respect, and families with toddlers use the shallow sound side instead.

Neither place is a food trip, but the Outer Banks give you more to look forward to. In the Adirondacks you eat diner pancakes with maple syrup, trout and steak in lodge dining rooms and Champlain Valley cider in autumn, with the widest choice in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.

On the coast, the meals revolve around fresh catch: steamed shrimp, soft-shell crab and local tuna in dockside shacks, or fish bought from the harbours at Wanchese and Hatteras to cook in your rental house.

Both places offer scattered single sights, not great museums, but the Outer Banks' history is slightly better known. The Adirondacks have colonial forts at Ticonderoga and Lake George, Gilded Age Great Camps such as Sagamore, and the Olympic venues of Lake Placid, with long drives between them.

On the Outer Banks, the Wright Brothers memorial at Kill Devil Hills and the Lost Colony site on Roanoke Island are landmarks of national history. Add the striped lighthouses from Currituck to Cape Hatteras and you can see a fair amount in a few mornings.

The real difference is how spread out the evenings are. In the Adirondacks, going out is concentrated in Lake George village, where a bar strip, waterfront decks and party boats draw a young crowd on summer weekends, with a few brewpubs on Lake Placid's Main Street. Anywhere else, the night ends at a campfire.

The Outer Banks give you a little more to choose from along the coast. There are sunset drinks on sound-side decks, beach bars and taprooms along the bypass in Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head, and seafood bars where people stay on after dinner. Clubs are almost absent here too.

This is where the Adirondacks pull far ahead. They have a huge protected wilderness of forty-six High Peaks, with Mount Marcy rising to about 1,630m, and thousands of lakes linked by portages and lean-tos. Moose live in the north, foliage turns the hills red and gold in autumn, and in winter there is skiing and ice climbing.

The Outer Banks' nature is lower and flatter, though it has its own appeal. You can walk the great sand dunes of Jockey's Ridge, watch wild mustangs north of Corolla and migrating birds at Pea Island, and the shallow sounds near Rodanthe are world-class for kiteboarding. Walking there, though, means beach strolls, not summits.

The Adirondacks have more within reach. From Lake George you can visit the Victorian streets and racecourse of Saratoga Springs or the capitol in Albany. From the Champlain shore, ferries cross to Burlington in Vermont, and Montreal makes a long but possible day from the northern lakes.

On the Outer Banks, the best outing is the ferry from Hatteras to the sandy lanes of Ocracoke. After that come colonial Edenton and the naval museums of Norfolk, both worth a day but neither strong enough to plan a trip around.

Both are long-standing family favourites, but they give children different summers. In the Adirondacks, families have the theme park and water parks around Lake George and Old Forge, the treetop walkway at the Wild Center and Olympic bobsled rides at Lake Placid, with drives in between and High Peaks trails too steep for small legs.

On the Outer Banks, a week revolves around the rented house and its pool, crab-catching, the aquarium on Roanoke Island and the wild-horse tours. There is no big attraction for a rainy day, and parents need to watch the strong surf.

Either way, you need a car, but the driving is different. In the Adirondacks, you drive winding two-lane forest roads, so moving between lake towns takes well over an hour. A train along Lake Champlain and a few buses link the bigger towns.

The Outer Banks are one long strip. You follow parallel roads through the central towns and then a single highway down Hatteras Island, with bike paths between Kitty Hawk and Nags Head, a ferry to Ocracoke and long bridge queues on changeover Saturdays.

Shopping is a sideline in both places, and what you take home is what sets them apart. From the Adirondacks it is rustic twig furniture, pack baskets, balsam pillows and maple syrup, alongside the outdoor-gear shops of Lake Placid. From the Outer Banks it is surf and kite gear, plus pottery, decoys and coastal paintings from galleries in Duck, Manteo and Ocracoke.

A summer in the Adirondacks is a little easier to do cheaply, because the cheaper places sit inland, away from the resorts. Lake Placid and the Lake George lakefront charge resort rates, but the central and western lakes have family motels and state campgrounds that cost much less.

On the Outer Banks, the beachfront is the whole point, and summer rentals often go only by the full week. You save by sharing a big house and cooking fish from the docks, or by coming in spring or autumn, when the sea is too cool for most swimmers.

Live performance in both places is a summer affair, and the Adirondacks offer a broader programme. They have chamber festivals in lakeside churches near Lake George, a young singers' opera programme near Schroon Lake and Lake Placid's arts centre, with the orchestra and ballet seasons at the Saratoga amphitheatre an evening's drive away.

The Outer Banks have one real show, but it is a distinctive one: The Lost Colony, an outdoor drama staged since 1937 on Roanoke Island, where the settlers lived.

For rest, the Adirondacks are the better choice. Saranac Lake grew up as a place where people came to recover in mountain air, and the whole region still keeps that slow pace: a canoe on a still lake at dawn, loons in the evening and nothing planned. If you want proper treatments too, the old mineral baths of Saratoga Springs lie just beyond the park's southern edge.

The Outer Banks give you a slower week rather than real restoration. The beach house sets the rhythm, with evenings on the porch listening to the surf, but beyond a few day spas and yoga studios in Duck there is little else to look after the body. The quietest places are Hatteras Island and Ocracoke in late spring and autumn.