Colorado Springs or Telluride?

Neither town has anything for a swimming vacation; both sit high in the Rockies, far from any coast. In Colorado Springs the choice is a hotel or public pool, or a cold reservoir in summer. In Telluride the nearest place to swim is an hour away near Ridgway, so a summer day on the water there means rafting, paddling or fishing rather than swimming.

The two eat about equally well, in different ways. Colorado Springs has more variety and lower prices: brewpubs with food trucks, green chile on Southwestern menus, and Mexican and Asian kitchens along the main roads, with the Broadmoor dining rooms at the formal end and little in between.

Telluride has fewer places but more ambitious ones, with chefs cooking elk, Colorado lamb and river trout, and wine lists deeper than you would expect in a small town. The catch is that you will be back at the same few tables within a week, and those tables fill up on festival weekends.

Colorado Springs gives more to see indoors. The aluminium spires of the Cadet Chapel, the Olympic and Paralympic Museum, the Southwestern collection at the Fine Arts Center and the Gold Rush story at the Pioneers Museum make a couple of good days, even if they are spread out.

Telluride's culture is its own streets. The clapboard and brick mining-boom town, protected as a National Historic Landmark, plus the museum in the old miners' hospital and the mine ruins on the canyon walls, fill a pleasant afternoon and little more.

Colorado Springs has a little more going on at night. Tejon Street downtown has sports bars, cocktail bars and a few places to dance that fill at weekends with students and soldiers, although the brewery taprooms close early.

Evenings in Telluride mean après-ski and the old wooden saloons on Colorado Avenue. These can stay busy until late in peak ski weeks and on festival weekends, but in the shoulder seasons the town is asleep early.

Both towns are superb bases for the outdoors, and Telluride has the edge because of how close the scenery is. In its box canyon, Bridal Veil Falls, the Blue Lake trails, the via ferrata and the ski slopes all start from town, and old jeep roads climb over high passes.

Colorado Springs has its own big sights in Pikes Peak, the red rock fins of Garden of the Gods and the punishing Manitou Incline, with excellent mountain biking. The mountains sit beside a city, though, rather than all around you, and skiing means a two-hour drive.

Colorado Springs is the better place for day trips. Denver's museums are a little over an hour north, the mining towns of Cripple Creek and Victor and the Royal Gorge Bridge are each about an hour away, and Manitou Springs is right next door.

From Telluride the options are few and the drives are long: Ridgway and Ouray within the hour or so, Silverton over Red Mountain Pass, and Mesa Verde right at the limit of a day trip. In winter the passes can make all of these slow or impossible.

Colorado Springs gives children far more to do. The mountainside zoo with its giraffe herd, Cave of the Winds, the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, the cog railway and a small Christmas-themed park fill a week with short outings, though you will spend a lot of it in the car.

Telluride suits active families who ski or hike. The free gondola and the ski school are its strengths, but there is almost nothing to do indoors on a wet day, and the greater altitude is harder on young children.

Once you have arrived, Telluride is much easier. You can cross the historic grid on foot in a quarter of an hour, and the free gondola and town buses reach Mountain Village and the slopes, so many visitors never drive at all. The hard part is getting there, with a weather-prone local airport and larger airports some way off by road.

Colorado Springs is the opposite: easy to reach and spread out once you are there. Its sights are scattered along the foothills and the buses are infrequent, so outside the walkable cores of downtown, Old Colorado City and Manitou you will need a hire car.

Shopping is modest in both. Colorado Springs is the more practical: rock and gem shops, galleries and Western wear in Old Colorado City and Manitou, plus outlets and big-box stores for anything you forgot to pack. Telluride's few blocks of Colorado Avenue, with galleries, jewellery boutiques and good bookshops, are nicer to browse but cost far more.

A stay in Colorado Springs costs about what an ordinary American trip does: a mid-range room, restaurant meals with the usual tip, and a hire car, which is the one expense almost no visitor avoids. Once the car is paid for, the days out add little, since a hike in the foothills or a drive up to Cripple Creek costs not much more than the fuel.

The same week in Telluride costs far more, and most of the extra goes on the bed, because rooms in town and Mountain Village are few and priced for wealthy second-home owners. Each day then adds its own premium: lift tickets and ski hire in winter, a guide for the via ferrata or the jeep roads in summer, and dinners at resort level all year. The free gondola and buses mean you may not need a car at all, but that saving barely dents the bill.

The two offer about the same amount of live performance, spread across the year in different ways. Colorado Springs has a steady year-round programme: the Philharmonic at the Pikes Peak Center, plays and musicals at the Fine Arts Center, and touring bands at the arena and amphitheatre in summer.

Telluride packs most of its programme into summer. The Bluegrass Festival in Town Park, the jazz and chamber music weekends and the Labor Day film festival draw people from across the country, and the Sheridan Opera House keeps a smaller programme going for the rest of the year.

Telluride is slightly ahead because the hot springs are closer. The large public pool at Ouray and the springs near Ridgway are about an hour's drive, and the Mountain Village spas are there after a day of skiing. The higher altitude can make the first few nights restless.

Colorado Springs relies on Manitou's old spa-town character instead. You can drink from the mineral fountains and soak in a small spa there, and the Broadmoor has a full resort spa. The well-known hot springs are more than two hours away, though.