Gatlinburg or Panama City Beach?

Panama City Beach has the beach and Gatlinburg has nothing of the kind. Gatlinburg is a mountain town far from any sea, and swimming there means cold, fast river pools in the national park or tubing near Townsend.

Panama City Beach is built along about 43km of fine white quartz sand, with clear green water in calm weather and quieter stretches at the western end and on Shell Island. Rip currents are the one serious caution.

Neither town is a place to travel for food, but Panama City Beach eats a little better because it has something local to offer. Its Gulf oysters, shrimp and grouper, eaten at dockside shacks, give meals a sense of place.

Gatlinburg feeds its crowds with pancake breakfasts, barbecue and fudge. Proper Appalachian cooking, such as trout, country ham and stack cake, turns up only now and then, and its most distinctive taste is the moonshine poured in tasting rooms.

Both are thin on conventional sightseeing, and they differ in where to look. Gatlinburg's heritage is handmade and rural: the working studios of the Arts and Crafts Community and the old log cabins, mills and churches out at Cades Cove and Roaring Fork.

Panama City Beach has a small diving museum and the older streets of St. Andrews across the bay. Most of its strip dates only from the mid-twentieth century onwards.

Panama City Beach offers more of an evening out, with beach-bar decks, tiki huts at sunset, cover bands and some summer weekend dancing around Pier Park. March spring break turns it loud, and in winter it falls quiet.

Gatlinburg's evenings amount to a stroll along the lit Parkway, a moonshine tasting and a hot tub back at the cabin. The strip has emptied by late night.

Gatlinburg is far ahead here. It opens straight onto the Great Smoky Mountains, with deep hardwood forest, waterfall trails, Clingmans Dome at about 2,025m and black bears seen from the road. Spring wildflowers and fireflies and the October colours shape each season.

Panama City Beach's outdoors is flat and watery: the dunes and lagoon of St. Andrews State Park, a rare coastal dune lake at Camp Helen, and dolphin trips, kayaking and wreck diving offshore.

Gatlinburg has the richer choice of outings. Asheville and the Biltmore Estate lie across the mountains, and the Newfound Gap road leads to the Cherokee museum and Oconaluftee village. Knoxville is about an hour away.

From Panama City Beach the trips run along the coast to the planned pastel towns of 30A, old Apalachicola and Destin's harbour, which are pleasant but more alike. Pensacola's historic district sits at the far edge of a day's drive.

Both towns are built around families, and Gatlinburg has a slight lead. It combines Parkway attractions, chairlift parks and nearby Dollywood with junior ranger walks, creek wading and bear spotting in the national park.

Panama City Beach answers with shallow summer water, a water park, dolphin shows and the calm St. Andrews lagoon for small snorkellers. Here the cautions are March's spring break crowds and the beach flags, while in Gatlinburg they are traffic and queues.

Gatlinburg is clearly the easier of the two to get around. If you stay downtown, the Parkway strip is compact enough to walk end to end, and a trolley loops through town and out to Pigeon Forge, so the car can stay parked for a day or two. You will still need to drive up to the hillside cabins, out to the trailheads and over to Asheville.

Panama City Beach strings itself along about 43km of beach road. Pavements come and go, there is no shade, and the trolley-bus is slow and runs rarely, so nearly every meal, shop and outing means getting in the car. Once you have parked, a walk along the sand between beach accesses is the one easy way to cover ground on foot.

Gatlinburg has slightly more worth buying, thanks to the Arts and Crafts Community, where quilts, pottery, brooms and woodwork are sold in the studios where they are made. Brand outlets are a short drive away in Pigeon Forge.

Panama City Beach offers chain stores at Pier Park, giant beachwear warehouses and surf shops. For anything individual you have to go to the boutiques along 30A.

Costs are much the same in both, and the savings come from different places. In Gatlinburg, a shared cabin and the free pleasures of the national park keep the bill down, while paid attractions and the October leaf season push it up.

In Panama City Beach, a condo kitchen helps, and long winter stays are especially cheap. Peak summer on the beachfront and the need for a hire car are what cost money.

Gatlinburg has more live entertainment, thanks to the mountain-music tradition. You can hear bluegrass in tasting rooms and on the street, and Pigeon Forge's theatres stage dinner shows and country revues most nights, along with the music programmed at Dollywood.

Panama City Beach offers cover bands on beach-bar decks and the modest season at the restored theatre across the bay in Panama City.

Neither has a spa culture, but Gatlinburg is easier to unwind in if you stay out of the centre. A secluded cabin with a hot tub, a rocking chair and mist on the ridges is the town's real form of rest.

Panama City Beach becomes restful mainly from autumn to spring, when the sand empties and long sunset walks set the pace. In summer it is crowded.