Beaver Creek or Kansas City?

Neither place has a coast, and they are about equal here. Swimming in both means lakes and pools. Beaver Creek has the small, chilly snowmelt lake at Avon and heated outdoor hotel pools with a mountain view. Kansas City has warmer lake beaches in county parks on the edge of the metro area, along with public pools.

Kansas City has a dish of its own, and Beaver Creek does not. Hickory-smoked barbecue and burnt ends are the reason to eat here, and the smokehouses range from old counters near the stockyards to polished dining rooms. Around them you will find the immigrant food stalls of the River Market and the Westside's Mexican cooking.

Beaver Creek eats well but within a narrow range. The menus are refined mountain cooking with elk, lamb and trout, sometimes served in a lodge you reach by sleigh. For anything everyday, you go down to the taquerias and diners of Avon.

The gap here is wide. Kansas City has a major encyclopaedic art museum with a strong Chinese collection, a serious national museum of the First World War, and the Negro Leagues and jazz museums in 18th and Vine. Union Station and the Country Club Plaza are worth seeing as buildings in their own right.

Beaver Creek was built as a ski resort around 1980. You can see its timber-and-stone village and outdoor art in an hour, and for any real history you have to drive to the old mining towns.

Kansas City gives you a proper night out. You can watch a game in the big bars of the Power and Light District, join the students on Westport's bar strip, or have a cocktail in the Crossroads. It goes quiet midweek, though.

In Beaver Creek, evenings mean après-ski by a fire pit and a hotel lounge after dinner, and the village is asleep early. Anyone wanting more has to drive to Vail.

This is where Beaver Creek leads by the widest margin. The ski terrain climbs to about 3,500m and links to Bachelor Gulch, Arrowhead and Vail. In summer there are the Gore Range, the Holy Cross Wilderness and gold-medal trout rivers. The only drawback is the altitude.

Kansas City's outdoors are pleasant and on a smaller scale: Swope Park, the Loose Park rose garden, creek-side trails and reservoirs for boating. For proper hiking country you need to drive several hours to the Ozarks.

Both have a modest handful of outings and need a car. What changes is the kind of place you visit. From Beaver Creek, you head to other mountain towns: Victorian Leadville high on its pass, gold-rush Breckenridge and the spa town of Glenwood Springs, all with mountain scenery on the way.

From Kansas City, the trips are about Midwestern history and small towns. There is Truman's Independence, the university main street in Lawrence, antebellum Weston, and the Pony Express and Jesse James stories in St Joseph.

Both work well for children, but in different ways. Beaver Creek is built around the family ski vacation. It has a large ski school, children's terrain, a car-free plaza where older children can roam, and warm cookies when the lifts close. On a stormy day, though, there is little to do indoors.

Kansas City has things to do whatever the weather: Worlds of Fun and its water park, a big zoo, Science City, an aquarium and Legoland Discovery at Crown Center. The cost of that is long stretches in the car between them.

Beaver Creek is easier once you have arrived. The village is car-free, escalators link its levels, many lodgings are ski-in ski-out, and free shuttles and valley buses cover the rest. The hard part is getting there, two hours from Denver over passes that winter storms can close.

Kansas City is built around the car. The streetcar along Main Street makes a day or two without one possible, but buses are sparse and the main sights are far apart.

Kansas City offers more to browse. There are the tiled Spanish-style courtyards of the Country Club Plaza, galleries and vintage shops in the Crossroads, and record shops and thrift stores around Westport. Beaver Creek has a small, costly cluster of shops on its plaza selling ski wear, western boots, jewellery and bronze sculpture, which is fine for a rest day but little more.

The gap in cost is wide, and the money goes on different things. At Beaver Creek the ski season adds a lot to the bill: lift tickets, equipment rental, ski school and on-mountain meals all come on top of the lodging. Summer is noticeably cheaper. Staying down the valley in Avon or Edwards and buying lift passes early also trim the total, but a visit here never becomes cheap.

Kansas City costs about what an ordinary American city does, and parking is plentiful. The extras are what to watch. Most visitors need a hire car, and sales tax and a tip go on every bill. For a family, tickets to Worlds of Fun, the zoo, the WWI museum and ball games add up. Even so, a week here costs far less than a week on the slopes.

Kansas City has the deeper programme and a sound of its own. Live jazz plays in small clubs most nights in the city that shaped Count Basie and Charlie Parker. The Kauffman Center houses a symphony, an opera and a ballet, and Starlight Theatre stages musicals outdoors in summer.

Beaver Creek has the intimate Vilar Center for touring shows. Its best weeks come in summer, when Bravo! Vail brings orchestras to the amphitheatre in Vail.

Beaver Creek is the better place to unwind. Its large resort spas have outdoor hot tubs in the snow and treatments for tired legs, the village stays quiet in the evenings, and the hot springs pool at Glenwood Springs is an hour away.

In Kansas City, wellness means hotel and day spas or the old mineral-water town of Excelsior Springs. A slow morning among the roses in Loose Park is the city's gentler version of a rest day.