Huntington Beach or Telluride?

Huntington Beach is a beach town in the full sense. About 14km of wide sand has volleyball nets, fire rings and steady surf. The Pacific is cool outside late summer, though, and rip currents keep swimmers close to the lifeguard towers.

Telluride has nothing like it. The town lies high in the San Juan Mountains, and the only swimming nearby is a reservoir near Ridgway, an hour away and cold even in midsummer. Water there means rafting, paddling or fishing, not lying on a beach.

Huntington Beach gives you more choice, though not finer cooking. In town it is mostly fish tacos, brewpubs and seafood with an ocean view. The real reason to come hungry is Little Saigon in neighbouring Westminster and Garden Grove, one of the largest Vietnamese communities outside Vietnam, along with good Mexican cooking across the county.

Telluride has a few ambitious kitchens cooking elk, lamb and trout, and wine lists that are deep for a small town. The range is narrow, though, and over a week you end up going back to the same places.

Neither is a place to come for sightseeing, but Telluride has more to look at. The whole mining-era town is a National Historic Landmark, with clapboard houses, the 1913 Sheridan Opera House, a history museum in the old miners' hospital and mill ruins on the canyon walls.

Huntington Beach offers surf history instead: the pier, the International Surfing Museum and the handprints of the Surfers' Hall of Fame. Around them are postwar suburbs with little old architecture.

Huntington Beach has the livelier nights, though it all happens on one strip. Sports bars, rooftop beach bars and a few dance spots along Main Street fill with a young local crowd at weekends. Summer weekends get loud, and weeknights are quiet.

In Telluride, evenings mean après-ski and drinks in old wooden saloons on Colorado Avenue. These are busy in peak ski weeks and on festival weekends, but there are no clubs, and the town goes to bed early in the shoulder seasons.

Telluride's setting is the reason to go. Cliffs and peaks above 4,000m rise from the end of the street, and trails lead from town to Bridal Veil Falls, Blue Lake and the high basins. Summer brings wildflowers, autumn turns the aspens gold, and winter brings steep skiing with wide views.

In Huntington Beach the outdoors means the ocean: surfing, paddling in the harbour channels and cycling the beach path, plus the Bolsa Chica wetland for herons and pelicans. For hills you have to drive half an hour to Crystal Cove or the Laguna coast.

Huntington Beach sits in the middle of Southern California, so with a car you can reach Los Angeles in about an hour. Laguna Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano are to the south, a ferry runs to Catalina, and San Diego or Temecula's wineries make a longer day.

From Telluride the choices are fewer and further apart. Ridgway and Ouray are about an hour away, Silverton is over Red Mountain Pass, and Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings are at the very limit of a day trip. Winter weather can close the passes.

Huntington Beach is much easier with children. Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about half an hour away or less, and the Aquarium of the Pacific makes an easy morning. In town there is sand, pelicans at Bolsa Chica and lakeside playgrounds. The downsides are driving to everything and waves too strong for toddlers.

Telluride works for families who ski or hike. It has a good ski school, and children enjoy the free gondola for its own sake. There are no attractions to fall back on, though, and the altitude can disturb young children's sleep for the first few nights.

Telluride is the easier place to be without a car. You can cross the historic grid on foot in a quarter of an hour, and a free gondola and free buses link it to Mountain Village and the slopes. Getting there is the hard part, because the local airport is often hit by weather and the larger ones are a long drive away.

Huntington Beach is the opposite. Main Street and the pier are walkable and the beach path suits a bike, but buses are slow and infrequent. The theme parks, Little Saigon and Los Angeles all mean driving on busy freeways.

Huntington Beach has more to buy, mostly surf gear: board makers, swimwear and surf-brand clothing along Main Street. South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, about twenty minutes away, has the major fashion houses under one roof.

Telluride has a few blocks of galleries, Western clothing, jewellery and outdoor gear shops. They are pleasant for an evening browse but expensive, and not a reason to make the trip.

Neither is cheap, but Huntington Beach is the more forgiving. Motels on the inland boulevards, free beaches and modest Vietnamese and Mexican food help make up for beachfront hotel rates and the cost of a car.

Telluride is at the very top of the market. Rooms are scarce, and lift tickets, guided activities and meals are all priced for wealthy visitors. The main way to save is to stay in Ridgway and drive in each day.

Both are fairly thin on stage life of their own, in different ways. Huntington Beach relies on its neighbour. In Costa Mesa, a short drive away, the Segerstrom Center hosts the Pacific Symphony, ballet, opera and touring Broadway shows, and South Coast Repertory runs a respected theatre season.

Telluride's music is concentrated in summer. The Bluegrass Festival in Town Park leads the calendar, joined by jazz, blues and chamber music festivals and the film festival. The rest of the year, the Sheridan Opera House keeps a smaller programme going.

Telluride offers more ways to unwind. The Mountain Village hotels have full spas for after a day outdoors, and the hot springs at Ouray and near Ridgway, about an hour away, are good for an afternoon soak with mountain views.

Huntington Beach has no bathing tradition, and its spas are ordinary ones in resort hotels and shopping centres. Its calm comes from simpler things: yoga on the sand, sunset on the pier and an evening around a beach fire.