Moab or Page, Arizona?

This is where the two differ most. Page sits on Lake Powell, where the water is warm enough for long summer swims. Lone Rock Beach has sand you can drive down to, and a boat or kayak takes you to sandstone coves for jumping off the rocks into deep water. There are no lifeguards, though, and the shoreline moves as the lake level rises and falls.

Moab offers only a quick cool-off: the shallow pools of Mill Creek, Ken's Lake or a sandbar on a cold, fast-moving Colorado. Most visitors there end up swimming in the motel pool.

Both towns serve food for refuelling rather than for a special trip. Moab has the slightly better range, with breweries, coffee shops that open early for hikers and a few more ambitious dinner places with Southwestern touches, though Utah's alcohol rules make ordering a drink with dinner more formal.

Page has fewer good options but one dish worth looking for: the Navajo taco, frybread with beans, meat and chilli, sold at casual places and at roadside stands on the reservation.

Neither town is worth visiting for its buildings or museums, and the older history in both places is outside town. Around Moab it is rock art, with Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont petroglyphs on the cliffs along Potash Road and Kane Creek, plus dinosaur trackways. The small Museum of Moab covers the rest.

Page was founded in the 1950s for the dam builders, so its main sight is the Glen Canyon Dam and its visitor centre, along with a small museum about John Wesley Powell. The Navajo Nation around it gives the area a living culture that Moab lacks.

Evenings are short in both towns, and neither has a club. Moab is the livelier of the two. Its Main Street brewpubs fill with mountain bikers and rafters, and on busy weekends a place or two stays open late. Page has a handful of bars and a brewpub and goes quiet earlier. In both, the best thing to do after dark is look up at a very dark, star-filled sky.

Both are outstanding, but in different ways. Moab is a base for exploring on foot and by bike. Arches has more than two thousand stone arches and fins, Island in the Sky looks out over the canyons of the Colorado and Green rivers, and there are full days to be had in the Needles or the Fiery Furnace. Add the Slickrock Trail, climbing at Wall Street and the snowy La Sal Mountains above town.

Around Page the landscape is about water and light. You visit the glowing slot canyons of Antelope with Navajo guides, look down on the river at Horseshoe Bend and take a boat to Rainbow Bridge. Lees Ferry is the starting point for Grand Canyon rafting, and the Wave and Buckskin Gulch are within reach.

From either town, the best outings are mostly to landscapes rather than places. Page has slightly more within easy reach: the pioneer buildings at Lees Ferry, the Betatakin cliff dwellings at Navajo National Monument, the Western film-set town of Kanab and Pipe Spring's fortified Mormon ranch.

From Moab, the best cultural trip is south through Bluff to Edge of the Cedars in Blanding, with the towers of Hovenweep at the limit of a day. Grand Junction's wineries are almost two hours away.

Both towns are small, safe and easy-going, with no attractions built for children, and both have sheer, unfenced drops at viewpoints. Moab gives school-age children a bit more variety: dinosaur tracks, easy walks in Arches, jeep rides over slickrock and Junior Ranger programmes in the parks.

Page's strength is the lake. A day of splashing at Lone Rock or exploring coves in a rented boat is an easy win, although some slot canyon tours involve steep ladders.

You need a car in both towns, and neither has useful public transport. Moab is a little easier without one: Main Street is walkable, a paved path lets you cycle to the Arches entrance, and outfitters run shuttles to trailheads, many of them on dirt tracks that are best reached in a high-clearance vehicle. Page is also more remote, with the nearest major airports hours away, so most visitors arrive on a road trip.

Neither town is a place to shop for fashion or design. Moab is good for outdoor gear, with well-stocked bike, climbing and camping shops and rock shops selling geodes and fossils. In Page, the thing worth buying is Navajo craft: silver and turquoise jewellery, rugs and pottery, often bought directly from the maker at trading posts and roadside stalls.

Both towns charge resort prices for simple rooms in the busy seasons, and both are much cheaper in winter. The difference is in the sights. Around Moab, a single park pass covers a week, the best hikes cost nothing and dispersed camping on public land is free.

Page's main sights cost more to see. Antelope Canyon can only be visited on paid guided tours, and boats and houseboats on the lake are expensive. Camping at Lone Rock or Wahweap is the way to save money.

Moab clearly comes out ahead, thanks to one event. The Moab Music Festival at the end of summer holds chamber concerts in town and in canyon grottoes reached by boat, an evening worth planning a trip around. Page has nothing like it, only Navajo dance shows and cultural presentations for visitors and the odd band in a bar.

Rest in both places comes from the desert, not from spas, and the days in each start early and run long. In Moab, the few small massage studios mostly treat sore legs after a day on the bike. Anyone who wants real quiet books a remote ranch or a cabin up in the La Sal Mountains rather than staying in town.

Page has even less on offer indoors, just a few hotel treatments and motel pools. Its calm comes from wide views and quiet evenings once the canyon tours are over, and in summer an easy afternoon floating on Lake Powell is the closest thing to a lazy day.