Durango, Colorado or Salt Lake City?

Neither is a place for a beach, and the water each offers is different in kind. In Durango the summer pleasure is floating the Animas on an inner tube right through town, with a cool dip at Lake Nighthorse or on Vallecito's sandy edges. Salt Lake City has the novelty of floating without effort in the brine of the Great Salt Lake, muddy shore and brine flies included, while better swimming means a drive up to Wasatch reservoirs such as Jordanelle or Pineview.

The two eat about equally well, but their strengths are not alike. Durango's are green-chile Southwestern plates, Colorado lamb and trout, and an unusual number of breweries for a small town, their taprooms full of riders and rafters.

Salt Lake City's best meals come from the Mexican, Pacific Islander, Peruvian and Vietnamese kitchens along State Street, with fry sauce and fried scones as the local oddities. Utah's drinking rules leave wine and cocktails thinner there, so a beer drinker may find Durango the easier evening.

Salt Lake City has more to see. Temple Square, with the granite temple and the domed Tabernacle and its organ, makes a full morning, and the State Capitol, the painted Cathedral of the Madeleine and the dinosaur halls of the Natural History Museum fill a second day.

Durango's sights take an hour or two: the steam locomotives and roundhouse museum at the depot, a few blocks of Victorian brick and sandstone, and the Southwestern collection at the college on the mesa. Its greatest history, the ancestral Puebloan sites, lies out in the surrounding country.

Neither keeps late hours, but Salt Lake City gives more choice, with bars and a few dance clubs downtown and in the Granary District, a long-standing gay scene and the pubs of Sugar House, even if Utah's liquor laws limit strong drinks. A night out in Durango means a brewery taproom, a pint on a Main Avenue patio or a Victorian saloon with a piano player, with almost nowhere to dance and the town quiet before midnight.

Both put serious mountains within easy reach, so the choice is about which kind. Durango sits beneath the rugged San Juans, with singletrack from the edge of town, the start of the Colorado Trail, rafting through the centre and the high peaks of the Weminuche Wilderness, so it leans towards mountain biking and backcountry summers.

Salt Lake City's Wasatch rises straight from the city, and its big draw is the dry powder of Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude, under an hour up the Cottonwood canyons. It also has a desert contrast Durango lacks: bison on Antelope Island and the white Bonneville Salt Flats.

Durango is by far the better base for days out. Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings, the steam train up the Animas canyon to Silverton, Ouray beneath its cliffs and the Puebloan ruins at Aztec and Chimney Rock add up to a week of outings, nearly all by car.

From Salt Lake City the obvious trip is Park City's Victorian Main Street, with Midway, Ogden's 25th Street and the Golden Spike site after that. Arches, Zion and Bryce are four hours or more away and need nights on the road.

Salt Lake City is set up for children in a way Durango is not. Hogle Zoo, the aquarium, the Discovery Gateway children's museum, the planetarium and Lagoon's roller coasters cover rainy days and long weekends, and restaurants expect large families.

Durango works for families who love the outdoors, with the steam train, gentle tubing, the summer alpine coaster and the ladders at Mesa Verde. It has no zoo or big museum to fall back on, and its altitude of about 2,000m can tire small children for the first day or two.

Salt Lake City has real public transport: TRAX light rail from the airport to downtown and the University, the FrontRunner train along the valley, and ski buses up the canyons in winter. Its wide streets and long blocks make walking slower than the map suggests, and the zoo and canyons are still easiest by car.

Durango's centre is small and flat, a quarter of an hour from the depot to the top of Main Avenue, with a riverside trail for walkers and cyclists. Beyond the trolley corridor, though, the trailheads, the ski area and Mesa Verde all need a hire car.

Salt Lake City has the wider range, with department stores and familiar brands at City Creek Center, shops in Trolley Square's old streetcar barns, and independent and vintage shops around 9th and 9th and Sugar House. Durango's shopping is a stroll down Main Avenue, where Navajo and Pueblo silver, turquoise and rugs are the things worth looking at. Both are strong on outdoor gear, and neither has any luxury shopping.

Costs are much the same, and in both the bill depends on what you come for more than on the town. Salt Lake City has reasonable downtown hotels, cheap light rail and free sights on Temple Square, but ski passes and canyon lodging are expensive. Rooms in Durango are scarce in summer and at the peak of the ski season, and the train and guided trips add up; in both places a hire car is close to essential, while the trails cost nothing.

For an evening of music, Salt Lake City is the clear choice. Hearing the Tabernacle Choir rehearse with the great organ is worth a visit in itself, and the Utah Symphony, Utah Opera, Ballet West and Broadway tours at the Eccles Theater make up a full season.

Durango's stage life comes mostly in summer: a chamber and orchestral festival, a Victorian melodrama where the audience boos the villain, and chuckwagon suppers with cowboy music. Outside those months there is little choice on any given night.

Durango is the better place to unwind. Spring-fed mineral pools sit a few minutes north of town, Pagosa Springs' terraced pools beside the San Juan River are about an hour east, and the town itself moves slowly.

Salt Lake City's most memorable soak, inside the limestone dome of the Homestead Crater in Midway, is about an hour away. Otherwise relaxation there means resort spas in the canyons or Park City.