Bryce Canyon or Kings Canyon?

Neither is a place for a swim, but Kings Canyon at least has water you can get into. Once the snowmelt eases in late summer, the pool at Muir Rock in Cedar Grove makes a chilly reward after a hike, and Hume Lake has a small sandy shore. Earlier in the season the river is fast and dangerous.

Around Bryce, Tropic Reservoir and Panguitch Lake are for fishing and paddling, so a motel pool is the only realistic swim.

In both places food is mostly fuel, but Bryce Canyon gives you more to look forward to. The gateway towns serve ranch breakfasts, Navajo tacos and pie, and the historic lodge has a dining room with some atmosphere. A drive along Scenic Byway 12 to Escalante or Boulder finds kitchens that cook seriously with local produce.

Kings Canyon has lodge grills and small markets at Grant Grove and Cedar Grove. The nearest real choice is Fresno's Mexican, Hmong and Armenian cooking, over an hour down the mountain, so most meals are cooked at the campsite.

Neither suits a culture trip, and an afternoon covers the heritage in either. Bryce has slightly more to show of how people lived on the plateau: the 1920s timber-and-stone lodge, the red-brick pioneer houses of Panguitch and the ancestral Puebloan village at Boulder.

In Kings Canyon the history is told through trees and logging. It runs from the General Grant Tree, the Nation's Christmas Tree, to Gamlin Cabin and the stumps of the Big Stump area.

There is no nightlife in either, and both go quiet early. In the Mormon gateway towns near Bryce, visitors go to bed early to be on the rim for sunrise. In Kings Canyon an evening means a campfire and perhaps a drink with dinner at the lodge.

These are two of the great American park landscapes, equal in their pull but completely different. Bryce is about colour and strange shapes at altitude: a plateau edge crowded with orange and pink hoodoos, seen from the Rim Trail viewpoints or from among them on the Navajo Loop and Queen's Garden. Red Canyon, Kodachrome Basin, the slot canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Zion are all within driving range.

Kings Canyon is about sheer scale. It has giant sequoias at Grant Grove and a glacier-carved granite valley at Cedar Grove, and beyond the road's end lies the High Sierra, with black bears, alpine lakes and passes above 3,500m. Bryce gives you a dense run of varied walks from one base, while Kings opens the way into true backcountry.

Bryce's nearby towns at least give a road trip a few stops. Panguitch's pioneer main street is close by, and Kanab, with its history as a setting for Hollywood Westerns, and the college town of Cedar City each make a half-day out. None of them fills a whole day, though.

From Kings Canyon the list is shorter. There are the hand-dug Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno and the galleries of Three Rivers, but the valley cities are otherwise ordinary and Yosemite is too far for a day out.

Both work for families who like walking, and both have Junior Ranger programmes. The difference lies in what the children have to cope with. At Bryce, the flat paved rim between Sunrise and Sunset Points and the descent into Queen's Garden are memorable. The thin air, the steep climb back out and the unfenced drops make it better for older children.

At Kings Canyon, the short paths at the General Grant Tree, Zumwalt Meadow and Roaring River Falls suit smaller legs, and campfires under giant trees are the big draw. The winding drive is hard on children who get car sick, though, and the river needs constant watching.

Bryce is much the easier park to get around. Its scenic drive runs about 30km along the plateau with pull-outs at every viewpoint. A summer shuttle links the gateway town with the busiest overlooks, and the Rim Trail joins the main viewpoints on foot. The real effort is the long drive from the nearest sizeable airports.

Kings Canyon asks a lot more of the driver. It is an hour and a half from Fresno to Grant Grove, then another hour of switchbacks down to Cedar Grove, and the slow Generals Highway to reach Sequoia. There is no public transport, and the canyon road closes for the winter.

Nobody comes to either to shop. Bryce has a little more to browse: a large general store with Western wear, and roadside rock shops full of fossils and geodes. In Kings Canyon you get sequoia souvenirs, the visitor-centre bookshop and firewood.

In both parks a bed indoors is the expensive part and camping is the way to save, with Kings Canyon a shade easier on the budget. Around Bryce, the lodges and motels of Bryce Canyon City and Tropic charge high-season rates through the warm months. The older motels of Panguitch and a far cheaper winter help to soften that.

In Kings Canyon one vehicle pass also covers Sequoia National Park, and campers who bring their own food spend little. The lodges and markets inside the park have no competition and are poor value, while the cheaper motels in Fresno or Visalia mean a long drive each way.

Bryce has the one real draw here. The Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, about an hour and a half away, is worth planning an evening around between early summer and autumn, and there is a cowboy music show with dinner near the park. Kings Canyon has no performances at all, only summer ranger talks at a campground amphitheatre.

Neither park has a spa or a hot spring, and beyond the odd hotel hot tub at Bryce there is nowhere to soak. What both offer is quiet, but of different kinds. Around Bryce it comes between the effort: thin, cool air, nearly empty roads through small plateau towns, and a dark sky to sit under after dinner. The walks themselves are not restful, because every descent among the hoodoos ends with a steep climb back up to the rim.

Kings Canyon stays calm all day. The sequoia groves at Grant Grove are hushed in the early morning, and after dark the river is about the only sound on the valley floor at Cedar Grove. With almost no phone signal, it is the easier of the two places to leave the outside world behind.