Bethany Beach or Gatlinburg?

This is where Bethany Beach wins outright. The whole town faces a wide strip of pale sand with lifeguards all summer. Within half an hour you can reach empty dunes at Delaware Seashore State Park, the quiet sands of Fenwick Island, and calm bay water behind the barrier island for toddlers.

Gatlinburg is hundreds of kilometres from the sea. Swimming there means tubing on the Little River near Townsend or a lakeshore at Douglas Lake. The mountain water is cold even in July and can run fast after rain, so for most visitors the cabin hot tub is as close as it gets.

Neither is a place to travel to for food, but Bethany Beach eats a little better. Steamed blue crabs at picnic tables, crab cakes and fried clams give meals a real sense of place. In high summer, farm stands sell sweet corn and peaches, and Rehoboth Beach's larger restaurant scene and craft breweries are a short drive away.

In Gatlinburg you mostly eat pancake houses, barbecue and Southern comfort food made for crowds, with moonshine tasting rooms as the local novelty. Good Appalachian cooking like trout, country ham and stack cake exists, but you have to look for it, and keen eaters head to Knoxville or Asheville.

Neither place has much in the way of sights, and the little each has is quite different. Bethany Beach offers its carved totem pole, a small history collection about the church camp the town grew from, and the concrete Second World War watchtowers along the shore.

Gatlinburg's heritage is more alive. Weavers, potters and broom-makers work in their own studios along the Arts and Crafts Community loop, and the log cabins, mills and churches of the old mountain families survive in the park at Cades Cove and Elkmont. Both are things to drive out to, not to stroll past in town.

Both are early-night towns, so the difference is in what a quiet evening looks like. In Bethany Beach it is a boardwalk walk and a drink with dinner. Anyone wanting late bars drives twenty minutes to the crowded beach bars of Dewey Beach or down to Ocean City.

Gatlinburg keeps a bit more going on its lit Parkway, with moonshine tasting rooms, a few brewery and rooftop terraces and late fudge shops. Still, there are no clubs, the strip is empty by late night, and many visitors end the day in the hot tub on their cabin deck.

Gatlinburg is in another league here. Deep hardwood forest begins where the Parkway ends. Trails range from short walks to Grotto Falls to the climb up Mount LeConte, and the Newfound Gap road takes you up towards Clingmans Dome at about 2,025m. Black bears, deer and elk are part of the trip, and each season changes the scene, from spring wildflowers and fireflies to the October colours.

Bethany Beach's outdoors is flat and gentle: kayaking and paddleboarding on the Inland Bays, fishing at Indian River Inlet, ospreys and herons over the marsh. Its best outing is to Assateague's wild ponies. It makes a pleasant, low-effort week, but there are no hills, and the summer brings humidity and mosquitoes.

Gatlinburg has the stronger outings. Asheville and the vast Biltmore Estate are an hour and a half away, and across the mountains at Cherokee the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and the Oconaluftee village tell the story of the Eastern Band. Knoxville and Bryson City's heritage railway add a couple more.

From Bethany Beach the outings are smaller and gentler. Historic Lewes and its maritime museum are close, and Berlin has its Victorian main street. The best of them is the ferry across Delaware Bay to Cape May. They make easy half-days rather than anything you would plan a trip around.

Both are family resorts at heart, but Gatlinburg gives children far more to do. There is a large aquarium, mirror mazes, go-karts, alpine coasters and gondola rides to treetop bridges, with Dollywood and its water park a short drive away. The park adds junior ranger badges and creek wading. The cost is crawling traffic, long queues and tight parking in high season.

Bethany Beach offers a simpler, quieter week: a guarded beach, bike rides, crabbing and free family concerts at the bandstand. It has no zoo, aquarium or theme park, so bigger thrills mean driving to the boardwalk rides in Rehoboth or Ocean City, and most of it closes after summer.

You need a car in both, but the day-to-day feels different. Bethany Beach is small and flat, so once you have arrived you can walk or cycle between the rental, the sand and the shops for the whole week, and a seasonal bus runs along the coast road.

In Gatlinburg the walkable part is just the Parkway strip, served by a trolley out to Pigeon Forge. Most cabins sit up steep, winding roads, and the park can only really be reached by car, with long jams at weekends and in October.

Gatlinburg's shopping is more rewarding, thanks to its craft studios. Along the Arts and Crafts Community loop you buy quilts, pottery, baskets and brooms from the people who made them, which makes up for the T-shirt and candy shops on the Parkway.

Bethany Beach has only a short row of surf shops, gift stores and bookshops. The draw is the big outlet malls outside Rehoboth Beach, where Delaware's lack of sales tax helps, along with antiques on the inland roads.

Bethany Beach charges the most at exactly the time worth going. A summer week usually means renting a house or condo near the ocean at full peak rates, with few hotels to compete and resort prices at dinner. The bill falls sharply either side of July and August, and cooking for yourself, free access to the sand and Delaware's lack of sales tax all help. Still, a cheap week there is mostly a week when the sea is too cold to swim in.

Gatlinburg is the gentler place for the wallet, and its cheaper weeks still make a good trip. A group or several families sharing one large cabin, or a couple in an older motel, will pay noticeably less than for a beach house on the Delaware coast, and a cold-weather or midweek cabin stay is cheaper still. The mountains themselves are close to free. What closes the gap is entertainment: a family that fills its days with Parkway attractions and Dollywood tickets will spend fast, and October colour and the festive weeks at the end of the year push rates up.

Gatlinburg has more live entertainment, although none of it is high culture. Bluegrass and country players perform in the tasting rooms and on the street, Pigeon Forge's theatres put on dinner shows, gospel revues and magic most nights, and Dollywood keeps mountain music at its centre.

Bethany Beach has its bandstand: free summer concerts by cover bands and brass groups, with families on blankets. Rehoboth's community theatre and autumn jazz festival are the only extras nearby.

Neither has a spa culture, so what differs is the kind of quiet each offers. In Bethany Beach the calm is the whole town: leafy residential streets, a hushed boardwalk and near silence in spring and autumn.

In Gatlinburg you find it above the town, in a secluded cabin with a hot tub, a rocking chair and mist on the ridges, while the Parkway below stays crowded and noisy.