Daytona Beach or Gatlinburg?

These two are as far apart as they can be. At Daytona Beach the beach is the reason to come: about 37km of hard, flat sand, a sea warm enough for long swims in summer, and quieter stretches at Ormond Beach, Ponce Inlet and New Smyrna. The water is greenish and the rips are real, so it is a surf beach rather than a lagoon.

Gatlinburg has no beach at all. The nearest thing is tubing on the Little River near Townsend or a swim in Douglas Lake, and the mountain water is cold even in July.

Neither place is a destination for food, but Daytona Beach eats a little better because of its seafood. Grouper sandwiches, smoked fish dip and oysters, eaten on a deck at the fish camps along the Halifax River or down towards Ponce Inlet, are good meals with a sense of place.

Gatlinburg feeds a resort crowd: pancake houses, barbecue and fudge shops along the Parkway, plus moonshine tasting rooms. Good Appalachian cooking such as trout and stack cake turns up only now and then.

Daytona Beach has more to see, though not a great deal. You can tour the Speedway and learn about the speed records once set on the sand, the Museum of Arts and Sciences has a notable collection of Cuban art and a planetarium, and you can climb the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. That fills a day or two.

In Gatlinburg itself the landmarks are an observation tower and amusement parks. Its real heritage is in the working studios of the Great Smoky Arts and Crafts Community and in the old cabins, mills and churches of Cades Cove, which you reach by car as an outing into the park.

Daytona Beach is the place for a night out, though even here it is limited. Beach bars, sports bars and the biker saloons of Main Street keep going late, and during Bike Week and the race weeks the whole town turns into a street party. There are few clubs or cocktail bars.

Gatlinburg evenings mean a walk along the lit Parkway, a moonshine tasting and an early night in the cabin hot tub. By late evening the strip is empty.

Gatlinburg is the stronger choice by some distance. The national park begins where the Parkway ends, with hardwood forest, Laurel and Grotto Falls, the Alum Cave trail and the drive up to Clingmans Dome, and black bears are a common sight. Rafting on the Pigeon River and horseback riding add some variety.

Daytona's nature is flat and watery. The best of it is kayaking among dolphins on the Mosquito Lagoon, birding at Merritt Island and manatees at Blue Spring in winter. All of it is worth doing, but it is a gentler kind of outdoors.

Daytona Beach is better placed for outings, and they vary more. St Augustine's Spanish fort and old streets lie an hour to the north, Kennedy Space Center is just over an hour to the south, and Orlando and Winter Park are inland, so history, rockets and theme parks are all within reach.

Gatlinburg's best trip is Asheville and the Biltmore Estate, an hour and a half away. Cherokee over Newfound Gap and Knoxville's market square are also good days out, but after those the choice gets thin.

Gatlinburg is designed around children. The Parkway has an aquarium, mirror mazes, alpine coasters and chairlifts up to treetop bridges, Dollywood is just down the road, and the park adds easy waterfall walks, creek wading and junior ranger badges. Traffic and queues are the price you pay.

Daytona Beach is a good, simpler family beach trip, with wide sand, the boardwalk arcades and an easy drive to Orlando. Rip currents, strong summer heat and the event weeks call for more planning.

Neither town is easy without a car, but Gatlinburg is the less difficult of the two. Its Parkway strip is compact enough to walk, and a trolley loops through town and out to Pigeon Forge, so a downtown hotel guest can leave the car parked for a day or two.

Daytona is spread along long, wide roads on both sides of the river, and the buses are too infrequent to be useful. Apart from walking or cycling along the beach itself, almost everything needs wheels.

Gatlinburg has slightly better shopping, mainly because of the Arts and Crafts Community, where you can buy quilts, pottery, brooms and woodwork straight from the people who made them. Daytona has nothing like it. Its shopping is an outlet centre, a mall, swimwear stalls and the biker gear of Main Street, with a few galleries on Beach Street.

Overall the cost is about the same, but the money goes on different things. In Daytona Beach, older oceanfront motels and condos are plentiful and casual seafood keeps meals reasonable, but a car is almost essential and room rates jump during the Daytona 500 and Bike Week.

In Gatlinburg, a large cabin shared between families can be good value, especially midweek, and the national park costs little to enjoy. The paid attractions and Dollywood add up quickly with children, and rates rise in October's leaf season and over Christmas and New Year.

The two are level, and each is modest in its own way. Daytona Beach has the more formal programme: a long-running winter series of visiting orchestras, touring Broadway shows at the Peabody Auditorium and free summer concerts at the oceanfront bandshell. Gatlinburg's offer is mountain music, with bluegrass played in the tasting rooms and on the street, and the dinner shows and gospel revues of Pigeon Forge.

Both towns have a few resort and day spas, and in both the real rest comes from the way you stay. In Daytona Beach that means early walks on the hard sand, an afternoon by the condo pool and sunset over the river. In Gatlinburg it means a hillside cabin with a hot tub and mist on the ridges, which feels a little more secluded. In each place the calm depends on your dates or where you stay: avoid race weeks and Bike Week in Daytona, and stay above the Parkway rather than on it in Gatlinburg.