Moab or Rapid City?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Rapid City at least offers a proper summer swim. Sheridan Lake, Pactola Reservoir and Sylvan Lake are in the pine hills within about half an hour, with small shores and clear water around 20°C to 22°C in high summer.

Moab has only Mill Creek's shallow pools, Ken's Lake and sandbars on a fast, silty Colorado River that calls for caution. Most visitors there end up swimming in the motel pool.

Rapid City has a modest regional cuisine to try: bison burgers, chislic skewers at the bar and Indian tacos on Lakota fry bread, along with wineries and distillers out in the hills. Moab has no local dishes. Its Main Street is burgers, tacos, pizza and a few Southwestern dinner menus, there is less choice in winter, and Utah's alcohol rules make a drink with dinner more formal than many visitors expect.

In both places you eat to refuel after a day outdoors rather than travel for the food.

Rapid City has more to see in town. Bronze presidents stand on the downtown corners, the Journey Museum covers Lakota history and the gold rush, and the geology and air and space museums hold Badlands fossils and Cold War aircraft. Together they fill a day.

Moab's town offers only the small Museum of Moab and a few uranium-boom buildings. Its real cultural interest is the Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont rock art on the cliffs along Potash Road and Kane Creek, which you see outdoors rather than in a gallery.

Both towns go to bed early, but Rapid City has a little more choice. Around Main Street Square there are brewpubs, sports bars, country-music bars and the odd cocktail lounge, and the Sturgis rally keeps the whole region loud and late in early August.

In Moab, an evening means a brewpub full of mountain bikers and rafters before lights out around eleven. Its real night-time draw is an exceptionally dark sky full of stars.

Both are first-rate outdoor bases, and Moab is the more spectacular of the two. Its red-rock country of arches, fins and deep canyons carved by the Colorado and Green rivers is world-class for mountain biking on Slickrock and the Whole Enchilada, and it adds rafting, climbing and canyoneering, with the snow-capped La Sals rising above it all.

The Black Hills outside Rapid City are a greener kind of wild, with ponderosa forest, granite spires and trout streams. Their highlights are wildlife and caves: bison and elk in Custer State Park, guided tours underground at Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, and the Badlands an hour east.

This is where the two differ most. From Rapid City, Mount Rushmore is half an hour away and the Crazy Horse Memorial with its museum of Native American culture is just beyond. Gold-rush Deadwood, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, the Minuteman Missile silo and Wall's famous drugstore are all within a day, so there are plenty of places to visit besides scenery.

Moab's outings are nearly all landscape. The towns nearby are small, and the most rewarding trips, to the ruins at Edge of the Cedars or the towers of Hovenweep, take most of a day on long desert roads.

Rapid City has been a family road-trip destination for generations, and it offers young children far more. There are the concrete dinosaurs, Storybook Island, a drive-through park with bears and wolves, gold panning and the digs at the Mammoth Site, plus plenty of motels with pools.

Moab works well for school-age children who love scrambling on rock, with short walks to Sand Dune Arch, dinosaur tracks and gentle raft floats. But it has nothing built for children, and the heat and unfenced drops make it hard going with toddlers.

Both are car destinations, each with a small, walkable centre and parks spread far beyond it. In Moab, a paved path lets you cycle to the Arches entrance, but many trailheads are on dirt tracks where a high-clearance vehicle opens up much more.

Rapid City has a local bus that never reaches the hills, but the roads are paved and quiet. The Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road are slow, with tight tunnels, and are part of the pleasure.

Rapid City has a little more to browse. There is Black Hills gold jewellery with its grape-leaf designs, Lakota quillwork and star quilts in the downtown galleries, Western boots and hats, and a regional mall for the basics.

Moab's Main Street is better for kit than for keepsakes. It has excellent bike, climbing and camping shops, rock shops full of geodes and fossils, and a few galleries selling Navajo jewellery and weavings.

Rapid City is easier on the wallet, with reasonable motels and meals and many free sights. Rooms get expensive in summer and especially during the August rally week.

Moab is a small town with few rooms and heavy demand in spring and autumn, so even simple motels charge resort prices, and rafting or jeep tours add up fast. You save there by camping on public land and doing the many free hikes, or by coming in winter.

Rapid City has more live performance across the year, though neither is a place to come for it. It has the Black Hills Symphony, touring shows and rodeos at the civic centre, a summer playhouse among the pines in Custer State Park and, most memorably, the big autumn powwow.

Moab's one highlight is the Moab Music Festival at the end of summer, when chamber concerts are held in canyon grottoes reached by boat. For the rest of the year there is little more than a weekend band in a brewpub.

Neither is a spa destination, and the kind of rest each offers is different. Rapid City has real warm-water bathing an hour south at Hot Springs, where a spring-fed indoor pool has drawn visitors since the 1890s.

Moab has no springs worth the drive, and its days start early and run hot. What it offers instead is stillness: red cliffs at sunset, dark skies, and ranches or La Sal cabins for anyone who wants to slow down.