Anaheim or Page, Arizona?

Both offer real summer swimming, but of very different kinds. From Anaheim it is about half an hour by car to the Pacific: surf and a pier at Huntington Beach, the harbour at Newport or the small coves of Laguna. These are proper beach towns with long sandy beaches, but the water is never really warm.

Page's swimming is in Lake Powell, which is much warmer in midsummer. The best of it is jumping off sandstone ledges from a boat or kayak, or swimming from the open sand at Lone Rock. There are no lifeguards and no beach towns, and the beaches change as the lake rises and falls.

Anaheim eats well once you leave the resort area. Brookhurst Street has Lebanese and Yemeni bakeries and grills, nearby Little Saigon has Vietnamese kitchens, and there are taquerias across the county and a food hall in the old packing district. Fine dining is down on the coast.

Page has nothing like this. Its strip of diners, barbecue places and chains is there to feed tour groups and road-trippers. The one local dish worth looking for is the Navajo taco, served on frybread.

Neither is a culture destination, and what interest there is comes in different forms. Anaheim's landmark is Disneyland itself, the original park and the only one Walt Disney saw finished, and the Bowers Museum, the Nixon Library and Christ Cathedral are a drive away. Page offers engineering and exploration instead: the Glen Canyon Dam visitor centre, a small museum about John Wesley Powell, and the Navajo Nation all around the town.

Anaheim is quiet after dark, but it still has more going on than Page. There are bars on the promenade after the parks close, brewpubs and cocktail bars in the centre, and full bars near the stadiums on game nights, with Long Beach and Los Angeles a drive away. Page has a few bars and a brewpub and is still well before midnight, so the best part of the evening is the dark desert sky.

This is Page's great strength. Horseshoe Bend and the glowing slot canyons of Antelope Canyon are minutes from town. By boat, Lake Powell's flooded red canyons lead to Rainbow Bridge, and Lees Ferry, the Wave and the Grand Staircase are within an hour or two.

Anaheim's outdoors is gentler: chaparral trails in the Santa Ana Mountains, tide pools at Crystal Cove and whale-watching trips from Newport and Dana Point. You can enjoy it all year, but the city itself is suburban and nothing here comes close to the scale of the scenery around Page.

Anaheim sits in a crowded region, so a drive of one or two hours reaches Los Angeles's museums and Griffith Observatory, the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Catalina Island, Mission San Juan Capistrano, the Temecula vineyards and San Diego.

Around Page, the land is the attraction and there are few places to visit. Lees Ferry's pioneer ranch, the cliff dwellings at Betatakin, Kanab's film-set history and the fortified Mormon ranch at Pipe Spring will fill a few days, but the drives between them are long.

Anaheim is built for family trips. Disneyland, Disney California Adventure and Knott's Berry Farm are minutes from family hotels, and the Discovery Cube and the Long Beach aquarium add variety. The downsides are long queues and needing a car for anything further afield.

Page suits families with older children who like the outdoors: a day on the lake at Lone Rock and a short Antelope Canyon tour both go down well. Beyond that there is nothing aimed at children. The summer sun is harsh, and the unfenced drops at Horseshoe Bend and the ladders on some canyon tours need close watching.

Neither works for long without a car, but Anaheim asks less of you. You can walk around the resort district or use the shuttles, so a stay that is only about the parks needs no car. Trains also run from the stadium transit centre to Los Angeles and San Diego.

In Page, only the motel strip is walkable. There is no useful public transport, and the lake and every viewpoint are outside town. The big airports are hours away, so most people arrive by car.

Anaheim has the wider range: Disney merchandise in the resort, a huge luxury mall in Costa Mesa about 20 minutes south, and outlet centres for mid-range buys, though you drive from one car park to the next. Page has supermarkets, boating supplies and souvenirs. It does have one real draw that Anaheim cannot match: Navajo silver, turquoise jewellery, rugs and pottery, bought from the makers at trading posts.

Page works out somewhat cheaper, mainly because it has nothing like Anaheim's biggest expense, the theme parks. In Anaheim, multi-day park tickets, hotels within walking distance of the gates and food inside the parks push the bill up, and car hire, fuel and parking come on top. Chain motels a short drive away and ordinary suburban restaurants and supermarkets bring the cost down.

Page is still no bargain. Antelope Canyon can only be seen on paid guided tours, boat and houseboat hire is expensive, and rooms are scarce in the busy months. Camping at Lone Rock or Wahweap, or visiting in winter, keeps costs down.

Anaheim has a proper night out within reach. The Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa hosts the Pacific Symphony, touring Broadway shows and ballet, the arena books big tours, and Disney's water shows and stage musicals are polished in their own way. Page has nothing worth planning a trip around, beyond Navajo dance shows put on for visitors and the occasional band in a bar.

For pampering, Anaheim has the spas, and for calm, Page has the desert. Anaheim's larger resort hotels have pools and spas, the suburbs have Korean-style day spas with saunas and scrubs, and the clifftop resorts at Laguna Beach and Dana Point offer proper treatments in quieter grounds.

Page has wide views, still evenings, dark skies and a motel pool after a hot day. In both places, early starts for the park gates or the canyons leave little time to slow down.