Laguna Beach or Snowbird?

Laguna Beach has a whole coastline of small beaches and coves. They run from Main Beach in the village to Crescent Bay, Victoria Beach and the wide sand at Aliso, with clear water and reefs for snorkelling. The Pacific stays cool for much of the year, though, so swimming is only comfortable in late summer.

Snowbird has no beach at all. A swim means the resort's heated pools or a drive to the cold reservoirs of the Heber Valley. The Great Salt Lake is somewhere to look at, not somewhere to swim.

Neither is a food destination, but Laguna gives you more to choose from. There are ocean-view dining rooms on the cliffs, fish tacos and poke, breakfast cafés for surfers and a few kitchens cooking local seafood with California wine. When that runs thin, the Vietnamese, Mexican and Korean restaurants of inland Orange County are close.

At Snowbird you eat where you stay: lodge restaurants, slopeside cafeterias and après-ski bars serving burgers and pizza. The dining room at the top of the tram supplies the view. Most guests drive down to Salt Lake City for a meal or two each week.

Laguna's culture is modest but real, and it comes from the town's past as a colony of plein air painters. The Laguna Art Museum and the galleries along Coast Highway and Forest Avenue fill a morning. The mission at San Juan Capistrano is a short drive inland.

Snowbird was built from nothing in 1971, and its angular concrete lodges are about the only architecture to see. The canyon's mining history has left almost no trace, so anyone who wants museums goes down to Salt Lake City.

Both are early-to-bed places, and neither has clubs. Laguna at least gives you a choice after dinner, from old beach and dive bars to wine bars and hotel lounges with ocean terraces, and these are busiest on summer weekends.

At Snowbird the evening peaks at après-ski in the lodge bars and on the sunny deck. By mid-evening most skiers are thinking about the first tram. From Laguna a proper night out means Newport Beach or Costa Mesa. From Snowbird it means a mountain drive to Salt Lake City or Park City.

Both are surrounded by fine landscape, but at Snowbird the mountain is the reason for going. The tram climbs to Hidden Peak at about 3,350m and the canyon gets some of the deepest, driest snow in North America. Skiing often runs from November into late spring. In summer, trails lead into the Twin Peaks and Lone Peak wilderness areas and to the wildflower meadows of Albion Basin.

Laguna's appeal is where sea meets hills. Its coast is a marine protected area for tide pooling, snorkelling, kayaking and whale watching. Behind it, canyon trails run through Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Aliso and Wood Canyons.

Laguna has far more within an easy drive. Mission San Juan Capistrano is about twenty minutes away, Newport, Huntington Beach and Dana Point line the coast, and a ferry crosses to Catalina. San Diego, Los Angeles and the Temecula vineyards each make a full day out.

From Snowbird the two obvious outings are Salt Lake City, for Temple Square and the State Capitol, and the Victorian Main Street of Park City. After Midway, Sundance and Ogden, there is little more than open country.

Laguna Beach suits a wider range of children. Tide pools full of crabs, lifeguarded beaches, easy snorkelling and the free trolley fill the days, and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about forty minutes away. The steep stairways down to the beaches and scarce parking take some patience.

Snowbird works best for families of keen skiers, ideally teenagers, because the mountain leans towards steep, expert terrain. The car-free base is easy to manage with children, and summer brings an alpine slide and a mountain coaster. The altitude tires small children, though, and the zoo and museums are down in Salt Lake City.

Once you arrive, Snowbird is the easier place to move around. The lodges, the tram and the lifts are a short walk apart on a car-free base. The catch is the single canyon road, which jams on powder mornings and can close for avalanche control. Winter ski buses help, but most visitors still want a car.

Laguna has a walkable village and a free trolley along Coast Highway. Almost everything else, from the airports to the theme parks, is a freeway drive, and finding a parking space in summer is a constant struggle.

Laguna is the place to browse. It has galleries selling plein air landscapes and glass, boutiques on Forest Avenue and summer art festivals where makers sell their crafts directly, and the luxury malls of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are half an hour away. Snowbird's few shops in the base area are for rental gear and forgotten goggles, so for anything more you go to Park City's main street or the malls of Salt Lake City.

Both are expensive, in different ways. In Laguna the money goes on clifftop resorts, summer weekend room rates, ocean-view dinners and parking, although the beaches, trails and trolley are free. At Snowbird the big costs are lift tickets, rentals and slopeside rooms in winter, and summer stays are noticeably cheaper.

The way round it is the same in both places. Stay somewhere cheaper, inland from Laguna or in a Salt Lake City hotel, and come in for the day.

Laguna has a cultural calendar of its own. The Pageant of the Masters, where performers recreate famous artworks as live tableaux in an amphitheatre in Laguna Canyon, dates back to the 1930s. The Laguna Playhouse puts on plays and musicals all year, and opera and the symphony are half an hour away in Costa Mesa.

Snowbird has summer concerts on the plaza, an Oktoberfest with oompah bands and the occasional band at après-ski. For theatre, opera or the symphony, you drive to Salt Lake City.

Laguna is the better place to unwind, because the calm runs through the whole town rather than one building. Days can start with coffee and a clifftop walk and end with the sun going down over the Pacific. In between there are yoga and meditation studios in the village, day spas for a massage and full ocean-view spas at the resorts on the bluffs, although the most comfortable of these come at resort rates.

Snowbird offers less choice. Relaxing here mostly means the large spa on top of the main lodge, with a rooftop pool, hot tubs and steam rooms that are at their best after a hard day on the slopes. Once the morning rush is over, the canyon is quiet and the nights are dark and still. Neither place has a bathing tradition of its own, but Snowbird has one unusual extra about an hour away: a soak in warm mineral water inside the limestone crater at Homestead in Midway.