Boulder or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither place has a beach. Boulder at least has somewhere warm enough to swim in summer: the small sandy area at the Boulder Reservoir and lazy afternoons tubing down Boulder Creek.

Winter Park's lakes near Grand Lake and Granby stay cold from snowmelt, so they are better for paddling than swimming. The more tempting water there is the warm mineral pools at Hot Sulphur Springs.

Boulder eats far better. It has health-minded, farm-to-table menus, plenty of vegetarian cooking, good bakeries and the Saturday market by the creek, which works as a social outing too. Winter Park serves ski-town fuel instead: burgers, green chile, pizza and the odd steak or trout dinner, with tables filling early on busy winter weekends.

Neither is a museum destination, but Boulder at least gives you a full day. There is the 1898 Chautauqua colony under the Flatirons, the sandstone and red-tile university campus, and the free weather and climate exhibits at the atmospheric research centre.

Winter Park's history is the Moffat Tunnel railway and a small homesteading museum in Fraser. Anyone after sights there ends up driving to Denver.

Boulder has the livelier evenings. Taprooms and cocktail bars line Pearl Street, and the student bars on University Hill are loud during term. Even so, the town goes to bed early. Winter Park's nights are après-ski: crowded base-village bars at closing time, a few pubs on the highway, then quiet. Summer there is calmer still.

Both are superb outdoor bases, and the difference is in the kind of trip. Boulder's ring of open space puts more than 200km of trails, the climbing walls of Eldorado Canyon and the training roads loved by cyclists within minutes of town. It also has mild, often dry winters for walking.

Winter Park lives at altitude, on snow. Two linked ski mountains, cross-country tracks and Berthoud Pass backcountry fill the winter, and a lift-served bike park and forest singletrack take over in summer. Both reach Rocky Mountain National Park in about an hour, Boulder from the east side and Winter Park from the moose country on the west.

Boulder has the better choice of outings, mainly because Denver's art museum, capitol and Union Station are an express bus ride away. Golden, Fort Collins and the silver-mining towns are an easy drive.

Winter Park's best trips are Georgetown, Idaho Springs and the old resort boardwalk at Grand Lake. Everything else means crossing high passes that winter storms can slow or close.

The two are evenly matched for children, but they suit different families. Winter Park is built around a ski week: a big children's ski school, gentle slopes at the base and a compact village, with tubing, sleigh rides and an alpine slide off the snow. It offers little on a rainy day, though.

Boulder is better for a mixed summer stay. Days can combine creek tubing, the reservoir beach and easy trails with a planetarium, a natural history museum and the street performers on Pearl Street. Altitude matters in both, and more so at Winter Park's 2,700m, where some visitors sleep badly for the first night or two.

Boulder is the easier place to get around without a car. The centre, campus and Chautauqua are all walkable, the creek bike paths are excellent, and a bus runs to Denver. Winter Park's free shuttle covers a ski week well. Beyond that, lodgings are strung along a highway, and the drive in over Berthoud Pass needs winter tyres. In both places, the trailheads further out call for a hire car.

Boulder offers a proper browse: the brick-paved Pearl Street Mall with its independent bookshops, galleries and boutiques, plus outdoor gear shops that are unusually good for a town this size. Winter Park's shops cover rental, tuning and forgotten gloves, and little more. In both cases, serious shopping means Denver.

Both are expensive, and the costs fall differently. In Boulder the hotel rooms and restaurant bills are what hurt, while the trails cost nothing. Staying in Denver and driving in is the usual way to save.

In Winter Park, lift tickets, rentals and lessons make winter the costly season. Summer is noticeably cheaper there, and condos with kitchens in Fraser help families keep food costs down.

Boulder is well ahead. Touring rock and bluegrass acts play its small rooms most nights, the wooden Chautauqua Auditorium hosts an orchestral summer season, and Red Rocks Amphitheatre is about 45 minutes away. Winter Park has free summer concerts in the town park and the odd band in an après-ski bar, and that is all.

The two are broadly level, but they offer different kinds of rest. Boulder's comes from its outlook: yoga and meditation studios on every corner, contemplative roots through its Buddhist-inspired university, and slow, sunny mornings. Its hot springs are an hour away.

Winter Park relaxes the body after a hard day outside. Most lodgings have a hot tub, and the hillside mineral pools of Hot Sulphur Springs are only half an hour west. The quieter weeks of late spring and autumn are the calmest time there.