Carmel-by-the-Sea or Deer Valley?

Carmel has a proper beach: a long curve of white sand under cypress trees at the foot of Ocean Avenue, made for sunset walks and digging. You still won't swim much there, because the water is cold and the surf is rough. Deer Valley is landlocked. Its only beaches are the sandy shores of Jordanelle and Deer Creek reservoirs, which are pleasant for a dip on a hot summer afternoon but are boating lakes rather than a reason to visit.

Carmel eats better and has a stronger sense of place: Dungeness crab and sand dabs from the bay, artichokes from Castroville, intimate French and Italian dining rooms and tasting rooms pouring local Pinot Noir. Breakfast at a bakery or courtyard café is part of the day.

Deer Valley's food is resort cooking. You get polished lodge meals and the famous turkey chili on the mountain, then steakhouses, sushi and après-ski grills along Park City's Main Street. It offers more variety than Carmel's mostly European menus, but there is no regional cuisine and no wine or café culture to speak of.

Neither place is a museum destination, but Carmel gives you more to look at. The Carmel Mission, founded in 1771 and the burial place of Junípero Serra, is one of the finest in California. The village also has Robinson Jeffers' hand-built granite tower and streets of crooked-chimney cottages.

Deer Valley's history is borrowed from Park City. That means the silver-mining storefronts of Main Street, old headframes on the slopes, the town museum and the Olympic Park from the 2002 Games, which together fill an afternoon.

Deer Valley has more going on after dark, thanks to Park City's Main Street. In ski season its saloons, cocktail bars and après-ski spots fill up, especially at weekends, although the scene stays small-town and closes early. Carmel barely has a nightlife. An evening there means a tasting room, a long dinner and a nightcap in a hotel lounge, and the streets are silent by ten.

Both places are first-rate bases for the outdoors, but the landscapes could hardly be more different. Carmel is all coast: granite headlands and sea otters at Point Lobos, the Big Sur bluffs and Bixby Bridge, redwood canyons, kayaking in the kelp and grey whales offshore in winter and spring.

Deer Valley is high mountain country at around 2,000m. In winter you have immaculate groomed runs, Park City Mountain next door and Cottonwood Canyon powder an hour away. In summer the same slopes turn into a large network of biking and hiking trails through aspen, with fly-fishing on the Provo River.

Carmel has more good outings close by. Monterey's Cannery Row and adobe old town are minutes away, followed by Pacific Grove's Victorian streets, the Carmel Valley wineries, Steinbeck country at Salinas and the boardwalk at Santa Cruz.

From Deer Valley, the main outing is Salt Lake City and Temple Square, about forty minutes away. Beyond that come the Swiss-styled village of Midway, the Heber Valley steam railway and Sundance, which are modest places. Most of what is impressive around Deer Valley is scenery rather than towns.

For a family that skis, Deer Valley is the easier choice. It has good children's ski schools, beginner runs without snowboarders and lodging on the slopes, and the Olympic Park adds tubing, ziplines and an alpine coaster. Altitude can tire small children for the first day or so, though.

Carmel's best family day is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with tide pools at Point Lobos to follow. Otherwise the cold water rules out paddling, and the restaurants are aimed at quiet adults.

Deer Valley is easier to manage without a car. Park City's fare-free buses link the base areas, Main Street and Park City Mountain, and Salt Lake City airport is only about forty minutes away. Carmel's square-mile village is walkable, but its lanes are unlit and the buses are infrequent. Point Lobos, Big Sur, the wineries and the aquarium all really need a car.

Carmel is the better place to browse. For a village its size it has an unusual number of galleries showing plein-air painting and photography, and courtyards full of cashmere, jewellery and homeware boutiques. Shopping in Deer Valley means Park City's Main Street, with western boots, galleries and outdoor gear, plus the outlets at Kimball Junction. Mountain equipment is the one area where it beats Carmel.

Both are luxury places, but Deer Valley is the harder one on the wallet. Slopeside lodging, top-tier lift access, ski school and rental add up very fast, and summer is the only real relief.

Carmel's boutique inns and dinners are expensive too, but its best features cost nothing: the beach, the village streets and most of the coastal walks. Staying in Monterey or Seaside cuts costs further. The equivalent saving for Deer Valley is staying in the Heber Valley.

Carmel's summer belongs to Baroque music. The Bach Festival has filled the Sunset Center and other village halls since 1935, the Forest Theater puts on plays and musicals under the pines, and in September the Monterey Jazz Festival brings in the jazz crowd from just up the road. Outside those seasons there is little beyond the occasional concert and community theatre.

At Deer Valley the big summer event is the Utah Symphony's open-air festival at the Snow Park amphitheatre, where the evening is a picnic on the grass with classical music, pops and visiting headliners. In town, the restored 1920s Egyptian Theatre on Main Street keeps plays, comedy and small concerts going through the winter, so a ski week can still include a show.

Carmel's calm comes from the coast: misty mornings, dark and still evenings, a fireside room in a village inn and a spa day at one of the Pebble Beach or Carmel Valley resorts. It is made for a slow weekend for two, with long walks between treatments.

Deer Valley's comfort is on the slopes: hot tubs on snowy terraces, polished hotel spas where a massage after skiing is part of the routine, and the Homestead Crater at Midway, about half an hour away. It is a limestone dome with a warm spring pool inside, and it is the one soak in either place that no hotel could offer.