Big Sky or Moab?

Neither is a swimming destination. Both are hundreds of kilometres inland and the rivers are cold and fast.

The difference is in how you cool off. Big Sky offers the chilly Gallatin, small ponds and a hotel pool. In Moab the desert heat makes a dip more appealing, at Mill Creek's shallow pools, Ken's Lake or a sandbar on the Colorado.

The food is much the same in both: hearty, casual and built around a day outdoors. Big Sky leans towards mountain cooking such as bison, elk, trout and big ski breakfasts, spread across three separate villages, with a few lodge kitchens aiming higher.

Moab keeps everything on Main Street, with burgers, tacos, breweries and a few dinner places with Southwestern touches. Utah's alcohol rules make a drink with dinner more formal than in Montana. If you want more choice, Bozeman is an hour from Big Sky, while Moab has no equivalent nearby.

Moab has more depth here, though it lies in the landscape rather than in town. Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont petroglyphs line the cliffs along Potash Road and Kane Creek, dinosaur trackways are close by, and the small Museum of Moab explains both.

Big Sky was built from the 1970s on and has little beyond the log cabins of the Crail Ranch homestead in Meadow Village. Neither place suits a trip planned around museums.

Big Sky has more going on after dark, mostly in winter. Après-ski fills the sunny decks at the base of the lifts in Mountain Village, a few Town Center taverns stay open after dinner, and old saloons in the Gallatin Canyon have pool tables and a ranch crowd.

Moab is quieter still, with a couple of brewpubs full of rafters and bikers and most of the town asleep by eleven. Neither has clubs. In Moab the best thing to do at night is look at the stars.

These are two of the finest outdoor bases in the American West, and the difference is the terrain. Big Sky is alpine: skiing on Lone Peak, summer trails into the Spanish Peaks and the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, fly fishing and rafting on the Gallatin, and Yellowstone's geysers and wolves about an hour south.

Moab is red-rock desert. You get the arches and fins of Arches National Park, the canyon views from Island in the Sky and Dead Horse Point, mountain biking on Slickrock and the Whole Enchilada, plus canyoneering, climbing and jeep trails. Their best seasons hardly overlap, which helps if you are choosing by date.

Big Sky has better outings away from the mountains. Bozeman, an hour down the canyon, is a lively college town with the Museum of the Rockies and its dinosaur fossils. Further out are the preserved gold-rush boardwalks of Virginia City and Nevada City.

From Moab, the towns within reach are small, Bluff being the most appealing. The best cultural outing is the long drive south to the Ancestral Puebloan ruins at Edge of the Cedars and Hovenweep, which takes most of a day.

Big Sky is the easier choice with children. Winter has a ski school and gentle slopes, summer turns the base area into an adventure park, and spotting bison on a day in Yellowstone is a real highlight. Its drawbacks are the thin air at around 2,300m and the long winter drives.

Moab delights children who like scrambling over rock, with Sand Dune Arch, dinosaur tracks, calm raft floats and Junior Ranger programmes. However, the summer heat, unfenced drops and constant car journeys make it better for school-age children than for toddlers.

Big Sky is easier without your own car. A free local bus links the canyon, Meadow Village, Town Center and Mountain Village, many lodgings are ski-in, and Bozeman airport is an hour away by shuttle. You still need a car for Yellowstone.

Moab's Main Street is easy to walk, and a paved path lets you cycle to the Arches entrance, but that is as far as you get on foot. The parks lie along long desert roads and dirt tracks, so without a vehicle, ideally a high-clearance one, you depend on outfitters' tours.

Neither is a place to shop, and both mainly sell gear. Big Sky has ski and fly-fishing shops, a few Western-style boutiques and galleries selling wildlife art.

Moab's Main Street has more to take home. Rock shops sell geodes and fossils, and galleries carry Navajo jewellery and weavings alongside the bike and climbing shops.

Moab is the cheaper of the two, though not by a wide margin in town, where simple motel rooms charge resort prices in spring and autumn. The real savings are campgrounds, free dispersed camping, a park pass that lasts a week and trails that cost nothing.

Big Sky is among the most expensive stays in the American West. Lift passes, ski school, guided fishing and slopeside lodging make every day costly. Summer is cheaper, and so is staying in Bozeman, but you pay for it in driving.

Big Sky offers a little more through the year. A small arts centre in Meadow Village brings touring musicians, chamber music and theatre in winter, and summer adds free concerts on the Town Center lawn and a short classical festival.

Moab's live music is concentrated in the Moab Music Festival at the end of summer. It is the more memorable event of the two, with some concerts held in canyon grottoes that you reach by boat.

For a restful stay, Big Sky is the better pick. The large lodges have full-service spas built around tired ski legs, hot tubs on the decks are standard, and natural hot springs are an hour away towards Bozeman.

Moab is an energetic trip of early starts and long hot days, with only a few small day spas and massage studios in town. Rest there comes from quiet desert evenings and the cliffs turning red at sunset, or from a remote ranch or a cabin in the La Sal Mountains.