Mount Rainier or Redwood National Park?

Neither is a swimming destination, but Redwood National Park at least has a coastline to walk. Gold Bluffs Beach, Enderts Beach and the Trinidad coves are wide, empty and full of driftwood, though the cold Pacific and sneaker waves keep everyone out of the water. In July and August the clear pools of the Smith River make a proper inland swim.

Around Mount Rainier the water is snowmelt, and the tarns and Reflection Lakes are for looking at or wading at most. Only a lowland reservoir such as Alder Lake offers a summer dip.

Redwood National Park eats better, mainly thanks to its southern towns. Arcata and Eureka have a small group of good restaurants built on Humboldt Bay oysters, Dungeness crab and farm produce, along with a Saturday market and craft beer, and Trinidad serves fresh fish by its harbour.

At Mount Rainier, food means diners and pizza in Ashford or Packwood and hearty meals in the Paradise and Longmire lodges. For a real restaurant you drive back towards Tacoma, so trailhead picnics carry more of the load.

Culture is a side dish at both, and what differs is its flavour. Mount Rainier's heritage is the park itself: the old headquarters at Longmire and the beamed lobby of Paradise Inn, which set the style for American park architecture, plus glacier and volcano exhibits.

The redwood coast has more varied fragments: a rebuilt Yurok-style plank house village at Sue-meg, Battery Point Lighthouse reached on foot at low tide, and Eureka's Victorian Old Town with the Carson Mansion.

Redwood National Park has the slightly livelier evenings, though only if you drive south. Arcata's university keeps a handful of bars and brewpubs going round the plaza, and Eureka's Old Town adds a few more. Around Mount Rainier there is a beer at an Ashford or Packwood tavern, then a porch, a campfire and an early night before a dawn start.

Both are first-rate, and the choice is between up and among. Mount Rainier is alpine: a glaciated volcano of 4,392m, the Skyline Trail across flowering meadows, the Emmons Glacier from Sunrise, mountain goats and marmots, and the Wonderland Trail for those with two weeks. Its high country is really a July to September affair.

Redwood National Park is forest and shoreline at sea level, with trees over 100m in Stout Grove and Tall Trees Grove, the fern walls of Fern Canyon, elk near Orick and grey whales offshore. Its trails stay walkable through most of the year.

Outings are equally modest, but they lead in different directions. From Mount Rainier the lowlands offer city museums: Tacoma's glass museum with its hot shop, the state history and car museums, and the capitol at Olympia, with Seattle at the edge of a long day.

From the redwoods the drives are to small coastal towns instead, the painted Victorian village of Ferndale, Arcata's plaza, Eureka's waterfront, and over the border to the harbours of southern Oregon.

Both work for outdoor families, with short level trails, ranger programmes and plenty of wildlife. Rainier's draws are snow at Paradise into early summer, Box Canyon's roaring slot, the bison and wolves of Northwest Trek and a steam railway from Elbe, but the winding drives and steep drop-offs on higher trails call for care.

The redwoods give children Fern Canyon to scramble through, elk in the meadows, a gondola into the forest and a canopy walk at Eureka's zoo. The catch there is the beach, where sneaker waves mean watching small children closely.

Both need a car, but the redwoods are much easier to cover. The parks string along about 70km of coast on US-101 and the scenic Newton B. Drury Parkway, traffic is light and the main groves sit close together, though Howland Hill Road and the Fern Canyon track are slow and unpaved.

At Mount Rainier, Paradise and Sunrise are some two hours apart by winding road, car parks fill on fine summer weekends, the east side closes in winter and chains are needed for Paradise. Picking the right gateway town matters a lot.

Nobody comes to either to shop, but the redwood coast offers a little more to browse. Roadside stalls sell burl carvings and chainsaw sculpture, Eureka's Old Town has galleries and antique shops, and Native basketry and jewellery are sold in both southern towns. Around Mount Rainier it is park gift shops and general stores, and gear is best bought in Seattle or Tacoma beforehand.

Redwood National Park is the cheaper stay. Entry is free, state park campsites are inexpensive and the motels around Crescent City undercut lodging near the big-name parks.

Mount Rainier costs little to enter, but its two lodges and limited gateway cabins charge full summer rates and fill early. Campers in the park and national forest do well at both, and June or late September eases room prices at the mountain.

Redwood National Park has at least an occasional programme an hour south, where Arcata's university brings touring acts and student productions in term and Eureka has a small symphony and community theatre. At Mount Rainier the evening entertainment is a summer ranger talk in a campground amphitheatre, and anything more means returning to Tacoma or Seattle.

Both offer calm rather than treatments, and neither has a real spa. Rainier's version is a cabin under the firs near Ashford with river noise and no phone signal, while the Ohanapecosh hot springs are only something to look at.

The redwoods offer the hush of old-growth groves, which many treat as forest bathing, plus a few rentable hot tubs and saunas in Arcata.