Estes Park or Minneapolis?

Neither city has a coast, but only Minneapolis gives you a swim. Its city lakes, including Bde Maka Ska, Lake Harriet and Lake Nokomis, have sandy strips and lifeguards, and the water is warm enough from late June to early September.

In Estes Park the lakes are snowmelt, too cold for anything but paddling your feet. Swimming there means a hotel pool or the indoor aquatic centre.

Minneapolis is clearly the better place to eat. The best of it is immigrant cooking along Lake Street and Eat Street, the Midtown Global Market and the Hmong markets. The North Loop and Northeast add chef-led restaurants and breweries, and the local Juicy Lucy and walleye give it some regional flavour.

Estes Park eats like a trailhead town, with big breakfasts, barbecue, elk burgers and taffy on Elkhorn Avenue. It is satisfying after a hike, but the choice is narrow and shrinks out of season.

Minneapolis offers far more to see. The free Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center and its Sculpture Garden, and the Mill City Museum by St Anthony Falls can fill two or three days.

Estes Park has one famous building, the Stanley Hotel of The Shining fame, plus a homesteading museum and the MacGregor Ranch. It is a rainy-afternoon programme for a place people visit for its scenery.

Minneapolis has a proper night out. It is spread across neighbourhoods, from old bars and taprooms in Northeast to warehouse cocktail bars in the North Loop and a younger crowd in Uptown, with bars open until 2am. It is a bar city, not a club city.

Estes Park barely has a night at all. A few taprooms and saloons along Elkhorn Avenue fill up after dinner, then the town goes to bed early, ready for dawn wildlife watching.

Here Estes Park is in a different league. Rocky Mountain National Park rises from meadows to tundra and Longs Peak, with hundreds of kilometres of trail, Trail Ridge Road above 3,700m, and elk, moose and bighorn sheep close at hand.

Minneapolis has an excellent green city instead. The Grand Rounds loop links the Chain of Lakes, Minnehaha Falls and the Mississippi gorge for cycling and paddling, and there is cross-country skiing in Theodore Wirth Park. It is flat country, though, and wild scenery means driving out to the St Croix bluffs.

The outings are about equally good, but they lead in opposite directions. From Estes Park you drive down the canyons to Boulder, Fort Collins and Denver for city life, or over Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake in summer.

From Minneapolis you go to quieter places. St Paul's Capitol and Summit Avenue mansions are a light-rail ride away, and Stillwater on the St Croix and the Lake Pepin river towns make an easy drive.

Both work well with children, and Minneapolis has a slight edge thanks to its rainy-day options. The Mall of America's indoor amusement park and aquarium, the Science Museum and Children's Museum in St Paul, and two zoos cover bad weather and winter.

Estes Park is the more memorable choice for outdoor families. Elk walk through town, there are junior ranger programmes, easy lake walks and a tramway up Prospect Mountain. Young children may need a day to adjust to the altitude, though, and there is little to do indoors.

Minneapolis is easier without a car. Light rail runs to the airport, the Mall of America and St Paul, the skyways keep you warm downtown, and protected bike lanes and the Midtown Greenway reach the lakes.

Estes Park has a walkable main street and free summer shuttles to the Bear Lake trailheads. Otherwise you need a car, since there is no rail link, and town traffic gets heavy on summer weekends.

Shopping in Estes Park means an hour on Elkhorn Avenue among the souvenir shops, taffy makers, western wear, outdoor gear and wildlife galleries. For anything more serious, you drive down to Boulder or Denver.

Minneapolis gives you far more to work with. The Mall of America is a light-rail ride from downtown and there is no sales tax on clothing, while the North Loop has independent boutiques and Northeast has makers' studios. The range is mainstream rather than luxury.

In Estes Park, the season you choose makes a big difference to the cost. Lodging near the park is expensive in summer and early autumn and much cheaper in winter and spring. Cabins with kitchens and hiking that costs nothing beyond the park entrance help, but you can hardly do without a car.

Across a whole trip, Minneapolis is gentler on the budget. City hotels cost moderate amounts by American standards, the art institute, the Sculpture Garden and the lakes are free, and light rail means you can skip a hire car for most of your stay.

This is where the gap is widest. Minneapolis has the Guthrie Theater above the Mississippi, Broadway tours in the Hennepin Avenue theatres, the Minnesota Orchestra and the Ordway across the river, plus First Avenue's long rock history. There is something worth seeing most nights.

Estes Park offers free summer concerts by the river, evenings at the Stanley Hotel and the September Highland Festival. For much of the year there is nothing to attend.

Neither is a spa destination, and the calm each offers is different. Minneapolis has a Nordic sauna tradition, with winter saunas on the frozen lakes and a cold plunge after, as well as unhurried evening walks around the lakes.

Estes Park's version is solitude: a riverside cabin, thin mountain air and elk at dusk. It is most restful in the quiet winter and spring months, and there are only a few lodge spas.