Grand Canyon or Yosemite?

Neither is a swimming destination, but Yosemite makes a swim easier to fit into a normal day. In late summer the Merced forms calm pools and sandbars right on the Valley floor, Tenaya Lake has a sandy shore along Tioga Road, and Bass Lake just south of the park feels like a summer lake resort.

At the Grand Canyon, the Colorado stays cold at about 10°C all year, and the pools at Havasu Falls need a permit and a long hike. Lake Powell's warm coves are the real option there, but they mean basing yourself at Page, hours from the South Rim.

At both, you will eat functional park meals, with one grand historic dining room at each to make an evening special. The difference is in the towns nearby. The Grand Canyon has Flagstaff, with craft breweries, a few serious kitchens and Southwestern dishes such as green chile and Navajo frybread. Around Yosemite you get diners, barbecue and Sierra foothill wines in the gateway towns, and a campsite cookout is often the best meal of the day.

The Grand Canyon has the richer built heritage. Grand Canyon Village keeps its log-and-stone El Tovar, Hopi House and the Kolb Studio on the rim. Desert View Watchtower is a building worth the drive on its own merits, and Flagstaff adds the Museum of Northern Arizona and Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was discovered.

Yosemite's man-made sights come second to the granite. The grand Valley hotel, the 1870s chapel, the Yosemite Museum's Miwok basketry and the stagecoach-era buildings at Wawona make pleasant short stops. Ansel Adams's photographs, which link the park to American conservation, are the most memorable part.

Neither is a place for nights out, but the Grand Canyon has a fallback. Flagstaff's historic downtown has brewpubs, dive bars and student venues, although it is too far from the rim if you plan a sunrise start. Yosemite has a lodge lounge, a campfire and a saloon in each gateway town, and the Valley goes quiet soon after dark. At both, the best thing to do after dark is look at the stars.

These are two of the great landscapes of North America, but they ask different things of you. At the Grand Canyon you look down into one vast gorge, walk the Rim Trail and then descend by Bright Angel or South Kaibab, by mule or on a multi-day raft down the Colorado. Condors ride the thermals along the rim, and the higher North Rim adds aspen and spruce forest.

Yosemite surrounds you with walls instead. Half Dome and El Capitan rise above a meadow floor, waterfalls pour off the cliffs in spring, and the Mist Trail and the hike to Glacier Point are classics. Mariposa Grove's sequoias, the alpine lakes of Tuolumne and winter snowshoeing at Badger Pass give it more variety across the seasons.

The Grand Canyon sits in a region with more to explore. Sedona's red rock and the hillside mining town of Jerome lie to the south. Wupatki, Walnut Canyon and Montezuma Castle preserve Ancestral Puebloan dwellings, and Antelope Canyon lies beyond Page. Distances are long, but each outing is a different kind of place.

Yosemite's outings are fewer and partly seasonal. The gold-rush main street at Columbia and the foothill wineries around Murphys lie to the west. Bodie's ghost town and Mammoth Lakes are only reachable while Tioga Pass is open.

Both suit school-age children who can walk well more than toddlers, though in different ways. At the Grand Canyon, the vintage train from Williams, the drive-through wildlife park and the Junior Ranger badges help, but the rim is unfenced, the altitude is above 2,000m and the descent trails are steep.

Yosemite's flat Valley floor is easier for children, with bike paths, meadows and paddling in the river in late summer, and the sequoias impress every age. It is mainly a camping trip, though, and the fast spring rivers and the bears need close watching.

The Grand Canyon is easier to get around. Good, quiet highways bring you from Flagstaff or Williams, or you can take the train. Once there, shuttles on Hermit Road and the Rim Trail link most viewpoints without a car. The catch is the North Rim, about four and a half hours away by road.

In Yosemite the Valley works well on shuttles and bike paths, and a regional bus from Merced makes a car-free visit possible. Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove and Tuolumne are each an hour or more of winding road from the Valley, and the only route east closes for much of the year.

The Grand Canyon has something worth buying: Native American craft. Navajo rugs, silver jewellery, Hopi kachina carvings and pottery are sold at Hopi House and the old trading posts at Cameron. Yosemite has maps, outdoor basics and fine-art landscape prints from a long-standing Valley gallery, plus a few antique shops in the gateway towns, so pack everything you need before you arrive.

Both are expensive if you sleep inside the park in summer, and both are cheap once you are walking the trails and riding the free shuttles. At the Grand Canyon, the easy saving is a motel in Williams or Flagstaff, and the big costs are the guided extras: mule rides, helicopter flights and rafting on the Colorado. In Yosemite, the saving is a campsite, if you can get one, or a winter visit or a room down in the foothills.

The Grand Canyon has a little more to see in the evening. A long-running chamber music festival plays on the South Rim in late summer, and Native American dancers perform at Desert View and in the village in the warm months. Flagstaff adds a small symphony orchestra and a historic downtown theatre.

Yosemite has ranger campfire talks, the occasional one-person historical show, a repertory theatre in Sonora and some summer concerts in the foothill towns.

Both offer the calm of wild country rather than spas, and the pampering lies outside the park in each case. From the Grand Canyon it is Sedona, about two hours south, a town built around retreats, yoga and treatments, while the North Rim's forests give the quietest days. Yosemite has a couple of resort spas near its southern entrance and open-air hot springs beyond Tioga Pass in summer, but the Valley in July is busy, so come in winter or head for the high country if you want quiet.