Estes Park or Kansas City?

Neither city is a beach destination. One sits high in the Rockies and the other in the middle of the continent. What differs is the water you can actually get into.

Estes Park's lakes are fed by snowmelt and stay too cold to swim, so they are for paddling, fishing and walking along the shore, and swimming means a pool or the indoor aquatic centre. Kansas City's county parks have sandy lake beaches that are warm enough for a summer afternoon with children.

Estes Park feeds hikers well enough, with big breakfasts, burgers, elk and bison, a few breweries and the taffy and fudge shops on Elkhorn Avenue. The choice is narrow, though, and many kitchens cut back outside summer.

Kansas City has a cuisine of its own. Hickory-smoked meat, thick molasses sauce and burnt ends are worth the trip, and comparing smokehouses from the old stockyards to 18th and Vine is half the fun. Steakhouses, the international counters at the River Market and the Westside's Mexican cooking add range, even if fine dining is thin.

Culture is where Kansas City pulls well ahead. The Nelson-Atkins, with its Chinese collection and Oldenburg's giant shuttlecocks, the National WWI Museum under the Liberty Memorial, and the jazz and Negro Leagues museums at 18th and Vine make two or three full days. Union Station and the Spanish-style Country Club Plaza are worth seeing on the way between them.

Estes Park has one famous building, the Stanley Hotel that inspired The Shining, plus the homesteading museum and the MacGregor Ranch. They make a good rainy afternoon, not a reason to come.

Estes Park goes to bed early. After the trail you can have a pint in a brewery taproom or a saloon on Elkhorn Avenue, but little happens after ten, because most visitors are up at dawn for the wildlife.

Kansas City has a real night out, spread over several districts: sports bars in the Power and Light District, student bars in Westport, and craft beer and cocktails in the Crossroads and the River Market. Clubs are few and weeknights are quiet, and you will need a ride between areas.

Nature is Estes Park's whole reason for being. Rocky Mountain National Park rises from ponderosa forest to alpine tundra and Longs Peak, with Trail Ridge Road climbing above 3,700m and trails to Bear, Dream and Emerald lakes. Elk, bighorn sheep and moose are everyday sights, and the autumn rut and golden aspens make autumn as good as summer.

Kansas City's outdoors is gentle: prairie and farmland along the Missouri, the huge Swope Park, Loose Park's rose garden and paved creekside trails. They are pleasant for a morning, but proper hiking country such as the Ozarks is several hours' drive away.

Both need a car for outings, and both offer pleasant rather than remarkable ones, but the outings are different in kind. From Estes Park you drive down the canyons to bigger places: Boulder and Fort Collins are about an hour away, Denver's museums a little further, and in summer Trail Ridge Road crosses the park to Grand Lake.

Kansas City's outings are to smaller towns with history: Truman's Independence, the university town of Lawrence, antebellum Weston and St Joseph with its Pony Express museum. Most fill half a day rather than a whole one.

Both work well with children, in opposite ways. Estes Park is a small, safe base for outdoor families, with elk in town, junior ranger activities, flat lake walks, mini golf and the Prospect Mountain tramway. The altitude tires little ones, though, and there is little to do on a rainy day.

Kansas City is the choice for theme parks and indoor attractions: Worlds of Fun and its water park, a large zoo, Science City, and the aquarium and Legoland Discovery Centre at Crown Center. The trade-off is long stretches in the car between them.

You will want a car in both, for different reasons. Estes Park's downtown and Riverwalk are easy on foot and summer shuttles run to the Bear Lake corridor, but the drive up from Denver, Trail Ridge Road and most trailheads mean having your own car, and summer weekends bring traffic and parking queues.

In Kansas City, the highways and plentiful parking make driving painless. The Main Street streetcar, linking the River Market, Union Station and Crown Center, allows a car-free day or two if you stay along it.

Kansas City has more to shop for. The Country Club Plaza puts chain and upmarket stores into tiled 1920s courtyards, while the Crossroads, the River Market and 39th Street add galleries, vintage, antiques and record shops.

Estes Park is an hour's browse along Elkhorn Avenue: souvenirs, taffy, western wear, outdoor gear and wildlife art. Serious shoppers there drive down to Boulder or Denver.

Kansas City is easier on the budget. Hotels cost less than in the coastal cities, a barbecue lunch is filling, and the Nelson-Atkins has free general entry, although a hire car, tips and tickets for a family soon add up.

Estes Park is expensive in summer and early autumn, when lodgings near the national park fill up. Winter and spring rooms are much cheaper, cabins with kitchens help families, and once you are inside the park the scenery costs nothing beyond the entrance fee.

Kansas City has a musical identity of its own. The swinging, blues-based jazz that produced Count Basie and Charlie Parker is still played in small clubs most nights. The Kauffman Center is home to the symphony, opera and ballet, and Starlight Theatre stages musicals in summer.

Estes Park's offer is seasonal: free riverside concerts in summer, evenings at the Stanley Hotel and the pipe bands of the Scottish-Irish Highland Festival in September. The rest of the year, concertgoers drive to Boulder or Denver.

Neither has a bathing culture, and both rely on hotel and day spas. Estes Park comes out ahead for calm, with a riverside cabin, mountain air and elk at dusk, and it is at its most restorative in the quiet of winter and spring. Kansas City's version is a slow morning in Loose Park's rose garden or the Nelson-Atkins sculpture park, or a drive to the old mineral-water resort of Excelsior Springs.