Huntington Beach or Mammoth Lakes?

Beach life is the whole point of Huntington Beach: about 14km of wide, flat sand with surfers at dawn, volleyball nets, a beachfront path and fire rings for bonfires after sunset. The Pacific is cool outside late summer and rip currents are common, so swimming means staying near the lifeguard towers.

Mammoth Lakes has no beach at all. Swimming there means a cold dip in Horseshoe Lake or the slightly warmer Crowley Lake in July and August. Most visitors sit on the shore or paddle instead, and the inviting pools at Hot Creek are closed to bathers.

Huntington Beach eats better, although mostly informally: fish tacos by the pier, surfers' breakfasts and brewpubs with ocean views. What really lifts it is Little Saigon a short drive inland, where pho houses and banh mi bakeries make a meal worth planning a day around.

Mammoth Lakes serves ski-town food, with big breakfasts, burgers, steakhouses and local craft beer, and more choice than its size would suggest. Meals there are fuel for the mountain rather than a reason to come, and some kitchens cut back in the quiet spring and autumn weeks.

Neither town is somewhere to go for sightseeing. Huntington Beach has a little more to show, all of it about surfing: the long pier, the International Surfing Museum and the handprints of the Surfers' Hall of Fame on Main Street. In Mammoth Lakes, a small history museum in a log cabin tells the mining and settler story among modern lodges and condominiums, and that is close to the full list.

Huntington Beach has a real Friday and Saturday night on Main Street, where sports bars, rooftop beach bars and a few dance spots fill with a young local crowd that gets loud in summer. Outside that one strip and the weekend, though, it is quiet.

In Mammoth Lakes, going out means après-ski: drinks in the Village and the bars near the lifts in late afternoon, and the odd late night on a ski-season long weekend. The rest of the year the town goes to bed early, and there are no clubs.

Mammoth Lakes is built around its landscape. One of North America's biggest ski areas sits above the town, and in summer the same mountain becomes a bike park while the granite lakes of the Lakes Basin open for hiking, kayaking and fishing. Beyond lie the Ansel Adams and John Muir wildernesses, Devils Postpile, Mono Lake's tufa towers and, once Tioga Pass opens, Tuolumne Meadows.

Huntington Beach's outdoor life is the ocean: surfing, paddleboarding in the harbour channels and cycling the beach path. Add birdwatching at the Bolsa Chica wetland and hill trails half an hour south, and the rest of the town's surroundings are flat suburb.

Huntington Beach is a far better base for day trips, as long as you have a car. Los Angeles is about an hour away, and Laguna Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano are closer still. Ferries cross to Catalina Island, and San Diego or the Temecula wine country make a longer day out.

From Mammoth Lakes, the outings run along one highway below the Sierra. The ghost town of Bodie and the Manzanar internment camp are both memorable but lie over an hour away. In winter the passes close, so most excursions head into the mountains rather than to other towns.

Huntington Beach makes the easier family trip. Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about half an hour inland, the Aquarium of the Pacific fills a morning, and back in town there are sandy beaches, pelicans at Bolsa Chica and the lakes of Central Park. The waves are better for boogie boarding than for toddlers.

Mammoth Lakes suits active families, with ski school, a tubing hill, rowing boats and trout fishing in the Lakes Basin, and the gondola for older children. It has nothing for a stormy day, though, and the altitude can wear out young children at first.

Both are driving destinations, but Mammoth Lakes manages better without a car on a ski trip. Free winter shuttles link the lodging areas to the lift bases, a gondola rises from the Village, and in summer a trolley serves the Lakes Basin and a shuttle runs into Reds Meadow.

Huntington Beach is easy on foot only around the pier and Main Street, and on a rented bike along the flat beach path. The theme parks, Little Saigon and Los Angeles all mean busy freeways, because local buses are slow and the town has no rail.

Huntington Beach is the place to shop. Main Street's surf shops and board makers sell the town's most characteristic souvenir, a local surfboard, and South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, about twenty minutes away, puts the major fashion houses under one roof.

Mammoth Lakes shops are practical: good ski, climbing and fly-fishing outfitters, rental outlets and a few galleries of landscape photography.

Both are costly places to stay, and Huntington Beach is slightly the easier on a budget. The beach costs nothing, motels on the inland boulevards undercut the beachfront hotels, and the Vietnamese and Mexican kitchens nearby feed you well for little, although a hire car is close to unavoidable.

In Mammoth Lakes, the expense depends on the season. Winter lift tickets, ski rental and lodging are steep. Summer hiking and lakes cost little beyond a park pass, and a self-catering condominium helps, though even groceries carry resort-town prices.

Huntington Beach has a real cultural programme close by. In town there are only cover bands and summer park concerts, but in Costa Mesa the Segerstrom Center hosts the Pacific Symphony, ballet, opera and touring Broadway shows, and South Coast Repertory runs a respected theatre season.

Mammoth Lakes keeps it local, with a community theatre on the college campus, and a summer jazz festival and chamber concerts held outdoors with the mountains behind them.

Mammoth Lakes is the more restorative of the two. Its volcanic ground feeds simple hot springs out in the sagebrush, where a sunset soak facing the Sierra is a local ritual, and the lodge spas and hot tubs ease legs tired from the slopes.

Huntington Beach has no bathing tradition, and its spas are ordinary resort and shopping-centre ones. It relaxes you in its own way, through yoga on the sand, sunset walks on the pier and evenings around a beach fire.