Bend or South Lake Tahoe?

Bend has no beach in the usual sense. Summer water fun means floating the Deschutes on an inner tube through the Old Mill District or a bracing swim at Elk or Sparks Lake in August. It is something to add to a stay, not a reason to book one.

South Lake Tahoe has beaches right in town. Pope, Baldwin and Kiva lie under the pines, Nevada Beach and Zephyr Cove are just over the state line, and the clear water turns turquoise over white sand. It is cold at this altitude and good for swimming only in July and August, but as a lake vacation it is in a different league.

Bend eats and drinks noticeably better. Its many breweries are the backbone, and you can walk or cycle from one to the next. Food-cart pods with fire pits make an easy evening, and downtown and the Old Mill District have some good farm-to-table cooking based on Pacific Northwest produce.

At South Lake Tahoe, meals are mostly fuel. You get casino steakhouses and buffets on the Nevada side and pizza, tacos and skiers' breakfasts along Highway 50. Quality varies and weekend waits are long, so many visitors end up cooking in the cabin. Neither town has a local cuisine, but Bend has more meals worth planning around.

Neither town is a place for sightseeing, and each covers its sights in an afternoon or so. Bend's best stop is the High Desert Museum, with live animals, Indigenous heritage and pioneer life. The old stone schoolhouse museum and the mill smokestacks tell the logging story.

South Lake Tahoe's history is about wealthy San Franciscans spending their summers by the lake. The Tallac estates stand in the pines by the shore, and Vikingsholm sits at the foot of a steep path above Emerald Bay. Visit it for its setting rather than its contents.

Both are quiet towns after dark, but in different ways. Bend's evenings are early and sociable: taprooms and food-cart courtyards full of people still in their trail gear, plus a short run of cocktail and dive bars downtown that stay busy on summer weekends.

South Lake Tahoe can stay up all night only because of the casino towers at Stateline, with their gaming floors, lounges and a club or two. Otherwise it has fewer bars than Bend, and its liveliest hour is après-ski at the gondola base.

These are two outstanding mountain bases with very different landscapes. Bend sits where the juniper high desert meets the volcanic Cascades. Mount Bachelor is half an hour away, mountain-bike singletrack starts from town, Smith Rock offers world-class sport climbing and the Newberry monument has lava caves and obsidian fields. The reliable sunshine means you can ski and bike on the same day in spring or autumn.

South Lake Tahoe is built around granite and water. There is the deep blue lake, the view over Emerald Bay and the many lakes of the Desolation Wilderness a few minutes away. In winter you ski straight from town, as Heavenly's gondola rises out of Stateline, and in summer you have the Flume Trail, the Tahoe Rim Trail and kayaking on calm morning water.

From Bend, most outings are into the landscape. Sisters has a western-style main street, Sunriver has its nature centre and observatory, and the Warm Springs museum covers the region's tribes. Beyond those, the nearby towns are working ranch centres, and Crater Lake is a long drive.

South Lake Tahoe has more places to visit. Virginia City has preserved boardwalks and saloons, Genoa and Carson City lie on the way, and down Highway 50 are Coloma, where gold was found in 1848, and the Amador wine country. Reno and a loop round the lake through Truckee and Tahoe City give you plenty for a bad-weather day.

Both suit active families, and neither has a zoo, aquarium or theme park. In Bend the children's favourites are walking through the Lava River Cave with a lantern, the otters and raptors at the High Desert Museum, splashing at Drake Park and the Mount Bachelor ski school. The museum also gives you something to do when the weather turns.

South Lake Tahoe has proper sandy beaches with shallow water, salmon running at Taylor Creek in autumn, sledding hills and the gondola ride. Storms can close roads, though, and the casino strip is somewhere to walk through quickly with children rather than linger.

In both towns, you walk around a small core and drive to almost everything else. Bend's downtown and Old Mill District are linked by a riverside path, and cycling on its trails and quiet streets is comfortable. The buses are of little use apart from the winter ski shuttle, and most visitors fly into Redmond.

South Lake Tahoe has better free shuttles along the highway and up to the ski areas. On the other hand, summer weekend traffic on Highway 50 and the Emerald Bay road crawls, and winter storms bring chain controls on the roads in.

Bend gives you more to browse. The Old Mill District has chain stores in converted mill buildings, downtown has independent boutiques and galleries, and the outdoor-gear shops are very good, with consignment stores for used equipment and no sales tax.

South Lake Tahoe's shops are mostly rental counters, ski shops, souvenir stalls around the gondola base and a few galleries of lake photography. Nothing there is worth giving up a day outdoors for.

The difference lies less in the total than in what you pay for. In Bend the unavoidable extra is a hire car. Against that, there is no sales tax, food carts make cheap meals and the trails and rivers cost little or nothing.

At South Lake Tahoe, lift tickets at the big resorts are the costly part. Casino hotels on the Nevada side cut their rates sharply midweek, and a cabin kitchen keeps meal costs down. Both towns are at their dearest in high summer and on ski weekends, and both are easiest on the budget in spring and autumn.

Bend's live music mostly happens outdoors in summer. Touring acts play the riverside amphitheatre in the Old Mill District and there are free concerts in the parks. For the rest of the year you have the restored Tower Theatre, a community symphony and bands in the brewpubs.

South Lake Tahoe's music is mostly indoors, in the casino showrooms and arena, where touring rock, country and comedy acts play all year. In summer there are concerts at the Tallac estates and the long-running Shakespeare festival on the beach at Sand Harbor. Neither town has opera or a professional orchestra.

South Lake Tahoe is the better place to unwind. Grover Hot Springs, about 45 minutes south, has a mineral pool in an alpine meadow, the Carson Valley hot spring resorts are an easy afternoon over the pass, and the quiet lakeside mornings away from the casinos are calming.

Bend's relaxation mostly means a hot tub after a day on the trails, or the resort spas around Sunriver. Its only natural springs are the primitive pools at Paulina Lake, which you have to hike to, and most visitors come to Bend to stay busy.