Bryce Canyon or California?

Bryce Canyon has no swimming at all. Its nearby reservoirs, Tropic and Panguitch Lake, are cold mountain water for fishing and paddling, and a motel pool is the only place to cool off.

California's southern coast gives a proper beach vacation, with wide sand, surf and boardwalk life from Huntington Beach and Laguna down to Coronado and Mission Beach. The Pacific stays cool even at its warmest, and north of Santa Barbara the shore is for walking, but San Diego or southern Orange County makes a real beach base.

At Bryce Canyon you eat to refuel: ranch breakfasts, steaks, Navajo tacos and pie in Tropic and Panguitch, with a few more serious kitchens out in Escalante and Boulder. Choice thins after dark, Utah's rules limit alcohol, and most hikers carry a picnic.

California is a food destination in its own right. Los Angeles has Mexican cooking across the Eastside, Korean barbecue in Koreatown and Chinese restaurants through the San Gabriel Valley, while San Francisco adds farm-to-table kitchens and Dungeness crab. The wine valleys of Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles give a trip whole days planned around meals.

Bryce Canyon's built heritage takes an afternoon: the 1920s timber-and-stone lodge, the visitor centre's account of the geology and Paiute stories, Panguitch's red-brick pioneer houses and the ancestral Puebloan village at Boulder.

California has far more to see, though it is young and spread out. The Getty, LACMA and the Huntington in Los Angeles, SFMOMA and the de Young in San Francisco, the Spanish missions at Santa Barbara and Carmel, and Hearst Castle above Big Sur make it a state of museums and landmarks rather than old streets.

There is effectively no going out around Bryce Canyon. The gateway towns are small, quiet Mormon communities where restaurants close early and visitors turn in to be on the rim for sunrise.

California offers real nights out, concentrated in its cities: Hollywood rooftops and clubs, West Hollywood's LGBTQ+ scene, Silver Lake dive bars, the Mission and SoMa in San Francisco, and San Diego's Gaslamp. Last orders at 2am cut the night short, and in Los Angeles you will need rideshares between neighbourhoods.

Both are first-rate for the outdoors, and the difference is focus against range. Bryce Canyon is one concentrated marvel: the hoodoo amphitheatre, reached on foot from the rim, with Red Canyon, Kodachrome Basin and the slot canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante close by, plus dark-sky evenings and winter snowshoeing.

California spreads its wonders across a whole state. Yosemite's granite walls, the redwoods, the Big Sur cliffs, Lake Tahoe and the deserts of Joshua Tree and Death Valley are each worth a trip, and the coast adds whales, sea otters and kayaking, but the great parks lie many hours apart.

Outings from Bryce Canyon are mostly more scenery. Beyond that there are only small places, such as Panguitch's main street, Kanab's Western film past and Cedar City, and none fills a day.

California gives a far fuller list, especially from San Francisco: Napa and Sonoma's tasting rooms, Sausalito, Monterey's Cannery Row and Carmel. From Los Angeles, Santa Barbara's Spanish-style centre and Palm Springs are the classics. Expect wine and coastal towns rather than old heritage sites, and allow for traffic.

Bryce Canyon works for walking families with school-age children: the flat paved rim between Sunrise and Sunset Points, the Junior Ranger programme, horse rides and stargazing. Thin air, steep climbs out and unfenced edges make it hard work with toddlers.

California is one of the great family destinations. Disneyland, Universal Studios, Legoland, the San Diego Zoo and the Monterey Bay Aquarium fill a week or more, and Orange County or San Diego puts most of it within an hour. Long drives are the main strain.

Once you are there, Bryce Canyon is the simpler place to move about. The roads are quiet, the park's scenic drive runs about 30km with a pull-out at every viewpoint, and a summer shuttle spares you the car parks. The hard part is the long drive from the nearest big airports.

California is easy to reach but tiring to cross. Distances are great and Los Angeles and Bay Area traffic eats into the day, so a hire car is essential outside San Francisco and central San Diego, where transit and walking work well.

Bryce Canyon offers a general store, Western wear, park books and roadside rock shops selling fossils and geodes, and little more.

California is a genuine shopping trip, led by Los Angeles: luxury on Rodeo Drive, vintage and streetwear on Melrose and in Silver Lake, and the beach-town boutiques of Abbot Kinney. San Francisco's Union Square and Hayes Valley add more, and the desert outlets near Palm Springs draw bargain hunters.

Neither is cheap, but Bryce Canyon is easier on the budget. Rooms in Bryce Canyon City and Tropic are the main cost in summer, yet camping, older Panguitch motels and picnic lunches cut that, and the trails and ranger programmes are free once you have paid park entry.

California costs more at almost every turn: coastal and wine-country hotels, tax and tips on meals, theme-park tickets, car hire and city parking. Taco stands and inland motels help, but it remains one of the costliest trips in the Americas.

Around Bryce Canyon, a summer cowboy dinner show is about it. A theatre lover can drive to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City for one evening.

California has full stages in two cities: the LA Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, summer nights at the Hollywood Bowl, Sunset Strip rock rooms, and San Francisco's opera, ballet and symphony. Festivals such as Coachella and the Monterey Jazz Festival add to the calendar.

Bryce Canyon's restfulness comes only from silence: empty roads, cool air and a lodge porch under the stars. There are no spas to speak of, and the days are spent climbing at altitude.

California has a long wellness tradition. Calistoga's mud baths, the hot-spring pool resorts of Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs, Big Sur's springs and the retreats of Ojai and Marin make a slow-paced trip easy to build away from the cities.