Big Bear Lake or Salt Lake City?

Neither is a swimming destination, but Big Bear has the lake on its doorstep. In summer you can take a cool dip from a dock or the rocky shore, and Meadow Park has the supervised spot for children, although most time on the water is spent in a kayak or on a paddleboard.

Salt Lake City offers the odd experience of floating in the Great Salt Lake, on muddy shores with brine flies. For a proper swim you have to drive up to Jordanelle, Deer Creek or Pineview, which means a half-day outing rather than an afternoon dip.

Salt Lake City gives you much more to eat. Its quirks, fry sauce, pastrami burgers and dirty sodas, are fun, and the real finds are the Mexican, Peruvian, Pacific Islander and Vietnamese kitchens along State Street, with breweries and a few ambitious restaurants in Sugar House and downtown.

Big Bear eats like a ski resort: pancakes in log-cabin diners, burgers, pizza and a brewpub pint. Many visitors cook in their cabins, and on winter weekends you can expect queues.

Here the gap is wide. Salt Lake City has a real set of sights, from the granite temple, the domed Tabernacle and Brigham Young's Beehive House on and around Temple Square to the State Capitol and the painted interior of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, enough for two full days.

Big Bear has the Discovery Center's forest exhibits and a small museum about the Holcomb Valley gold rush, plus a dirt-road drive past old mining cabins. That is an afternoon at most.

Salt Lake City at least has a downtown to go out in, with bars, breweries, a few dance clubs, the Granary District and a long-standing gay scene, even if Utah's drinking rules and early bedtimes keep things tame. Big Bear's evenings are après-ski pints in the Village pubs in winter, and otherwise a hot tub under the pines.

Both are true mountain bases, and Salt Lake City's are bigger. The Wasatch rises to over 3,000m right behind the city, and within an hour you are at Alta, Snowbird, Brighton or Solitude for the famous dry powder, with Park City over the ridge. The desert side adds bison on Antelope Island and the white Bonneville Salt Flats.

Big Bear's two ski areas are modest and rely on snowmaking, but the lake gives it something the city lacks: fishing, sailing and paddling right in town, bald eagles in winter, and the Pacific Crest Trail and Castle Rock hikes a few minutes from your cabin.

Neither is a great base for outings, though Salt Lake City has a little more within easy reach. Park City's old silver-mining Main Street is about forty minutes away, Midway and Heber are next door, and Ogden's 25th Street makes a half day, but Zion and Arches are too far for a day trip.

From Big Bear the winding roads slow everything down: Lake Arrowhead takes about an hour, the Oak Glen orchards and Riverside's Mission Inn take longer, and Los Angeles or Palm Springs make for a long day.

Salt Lake City has more to keep children busy for longer: Hogle Zoo, the Living Planet Aquarium, Discovery Gateway, the planetarium, the dinosaur halls and the roller coasters at Lagoon, in a city where large families are the norm. You will be driving across the valley to reach most of it.

Big Bear does a simpler thing well. Sledding and snow play for children who rarely see snow, the small Alpine Zoo with rescued bears, an alpine slide in summer and a cabin with room to spread out make for an easy, compact trip, despite the altitude and the weekend traffic.

Salt Lake City is easier without a car in the centre. TRAX light rail runs from the airport to downtown and the University, and the FrontRunner reaches Ogden and Provo, though the wide grid and the sprawl make a car useful for the canyons.

In Big Bear a car is essential. You arrive on steep mountain highways that may need snow chains, and only the Village is walkable, with a local bus and seasonal trolley to the slopes.

Browsing in Big Bear means a few blocks of the Village: fudge and candy stores, bear souvenirs, a little antique and home decor, and outfitters renting ski and lake gear. It fills an hour, and the bigger stores are down in the valley.\n\nSalt Lake City offers more without becoming a reason to come. City Creek Center has department stores along its open-air creek, Trolley Square fills old streetcar barns, and independent and vintage shops cluster around 9th and 9th and Sugar House. Its local ski, climbing and camping shops are the real find.

Costs are similar, and in both places the season decides the bill. Big Bear is cheapest when a group shares a cabin midweek and cooks for itself, and prices climb steeply on winter weekends.

Salt Lake City has the advantage of free sights on Temple Square and cheap light rail, but a hire car is close to essential and a ski week in the canyons is expensive. A summer hiking trip there costs far less.

Anyone hoping for an evening of music will find the two far apart. Big Bear's stage is a small community arts centre with local theatre and the odd touring act, free lakeside concerts in summer and the Bavarian bands of its autumn Oktoberfest.\n\nIn Salt Lake City the Tabernacle Choir's open rehearsals and broadcasts, often with the great organ, are the highlight. The Utah Symphony at Abravanel Hall, Utah Opera, Ballet West and touring Broadway shows at the Eccles Theater add to that, which is a fuller arts life than the city's size would suggest.

Neither is a spa destination, but they relax in different ways. In Big Bear the private hot tub on your cabin deck, a wood stove and quiet midweek days are the whole point, though busy winter weekends break the calm.

Salt Lake City has a regional curiosity that Big Bear lacks: the warm mineral pool inside the limestone dome of Homestead Crater in Midway, about an hour away, plus the resort spas in Park City after a day on the slopes.