Huntington Beach or Sedona?

Huntington Beach is a beach town through and through. It has about 14km of wide sand with surf breaks, volleyball nets and fire rings, though you should mind the rip currents and expect cool water outside late summer. Sedona has no coast at all, only swimming holes in Oak Creek such as the sandstone chute at Slide Rock and the deeper pools at Grasshopper Point.

Those creek spots are cold, small and crowded, a break after a hike rather than a day out in themselves. Anyone who wants sand and sea should look only at Huntington Beach.

Neither is a food destination, but Huntington Beach has more range. There are fish tacos by the pier and brewpubs on the coast highway, and above all Little Saigon a short drive inland, whose pho houses and banh mi bakeries are worth the trip on their own.

In Sedona the setting matters more than the cooking. Expect Southwestern menus and health-minded cafés on terraces facing the red rock. The better kitchens run out quickly, though the Verde Valley tasting rooms add wine to the trip.

Sightseeing in Huntington Beach comes down to surf history. The pier, the International Surfing Museum and the handprints of the Surfers' Hall of Fame at the foot of Main Street fill a morning in a largely postwar town, and for proper museums you drive to Los Angeles.

Sedona has a little more to show, and its history goes much further back. The Chapel of the Holy Cross, built into a red rock butte in 1956, is worth a visit for the building and the view. A short drive into the backcountry brings you to the Sinagua cliff dwellings at Palatki and Honanki and the V Bar V petroglyphs, and the Heritage Museum covers the orchard and ranching settlers who came later.

Huntington Beach at least has a night out. Main Street's sports bars, rooftop beach bars and few dance spots get loud with a young local crowd on summer weekends, though it is a single strip and quiet midweek. Sedona goes to bed early: a brewpub or resort lounge after dinner is about all there is, and the better show is the starry sky over the canyon.

This is where Sedona pulls far ahead. Red sandstone buttes rise straight from the edge of town. Trails lead to Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock and Devil's Bridge or up the shaded West Fork of Oak Creek, and there is slickrock for mountain bikes and jeep roads into the backcountry.

In Huntington Beach the outdoors means the ocean: surf breaks either side of the pier, paddling in the harbour channels, and herons and pelicans at the Bolsa Chica wetland. Inland the land is flat suburb, and for hills you drive to Crystal Cove or the Laguna coast.

Huntington Beach is the stronger base, as long as you have a car and avoid rush hour. Los Angeles is about an hour away, Laguna Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano lie to the south, ferries run to Catalina, and San Diego makes a long day out.

Sedona's outings are smaller but distinctive: the hillside mining town of Jerome, the cliff dwelling of Montezuma Castle and the Tuzigoot pueblo, the Verde Canyon Railroad and Flagstaff to the north. A few days cover them, while Southern California's list hardly runs out.

For children, Huntington Beach is much the better bet. Disneyland, California Adventure and Knott's Berry Farm are all within about half an hour, and the Long Beach aquarium makes an easy morning. Between theme park days there are playgrounds in Central Park and tide pools down the coast, but keep small children out of the surf.

Sedona suits older children who like being outside, with Slide Rock, short trails and jeep tours over the slickrock. There is no zoo or park built for them, though, and many of the hotels are aimed at couples.

You will want a car in both, and neither has useful public transport. What differs is the walkable part. Huntington Beach has a flat downtown and a beachfront path made for bikes, while Sedona stretches along two highways from the junction at the Y, with only Uptown walkable and a shuttle to a few busy trailheads.

Huntington Beach is better for clothes. Surf shops and board makers line Main Street, and South Coast Plaza's luxury houses are twenty minutes away in Costa Mesa. Sedona sells something else entirely: Western art and Native American jewellery, pottery and rugs in the courtyards of Tlaquepaque and the galleries along the main road, plus crystals and metaphysical books, but nothing in the way of fashion.

Both are expensive, and Sedona more so. Rooms are mostly resorts and boutique lodges, restaurants charge resort-town rates, and extras such as jeep tours, balloon flights and spa treatments add up. Staying in Cottonwood or Flagstaff and driving in is the usual way to save.

Huntington Beach's beachfront hotels are also costly and a rental car is close to essential. Still, the motels on the inland boulevards are cheaper, the beach is free, and the Vietnamese and Mexican places around the county feed you well for little.

Neither town has much of a stage of its own. Huntington Beach, though, is close to the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, with the Pacific Symphony, touring Broadway shows, ballet and opera, and the theatre season of South Coast Repertory. Sedona has a handful of chamber concerts, local theatre, its long-running film festival in late winter and Native American flute players at the resorts, and for anything bigger you drive to Flagstaff or Phoenix.

Sedona is a retreat town in a way Huntington Beach is not. Destination resorts have spas looking onto the canyons, and the town is full of yoga, meditation, breathwork and alternative therapies, with sunrise walks to the vortexes as a local ritual. Neither place has hot springs or thermal baths.

Huntington Beach has ordinary day spas and resort treatments. Its calm comes instead from yoga on the sand, a sunset walk on the pier and an evening around a beach fire.