Olympic National Park or Redwood National Park?

Neither coast is for swimming. Both stay cold all summer and are dangerous, with rip currents and rolling logs at Rialto and Ruby Beach, and sneaker waves on Gold Bluffs and Enderts. The difference lies in how you use them.

Olympic's beaches are the more dramatic to walk, with sea stacks, piled driftwood and rich tide pools, and its lakes, Crescent and Quinault, allow a brisk dip. Redwood's shore is wider and emptier, and its best swimming is far more pleasant: the clear, green pools of the Smith River on a July afternoon.

Food plays a supporting role in both, and the good cooking sits at the edges. Olympic's best eating is on the north shore, where Port Townsend's bakeries, seafood and local cider make the most varied table on either coast, with Dungeness crab and Hood Canal oysters. Its west side drops to diners and lodge dining rooms.

Redwood is plainer around the park itself, with burger stands and smoked-fish shacks, but an hour south Arcata and Eureka add Humboldt Bay oysters, a craft-beer culture and the Saturday farmers' market on the plaza. Trinidad's harbour is the spot for fish by the water.

Olympic has more to see indoors and in town. Port Townsend is a near-complete Victorian seaport with Fort Worden's artillery post on its edge, and the Makah Museum at Neah Bay, with its finds from the buried Ozette village, gives the region a museum worth the long drive.

Redwood's sights fill a half day rather than shape a trip: the rebuilt Yurok plank-house village at Sue-meg, Battery Point Lighthouse reached at low tide, and Eureka's Old Town with the ornate Carson Mansion.

Both are places for campfires and stars, not late nights. Olympic's pubs and taprooms are in Port Townsend and Port Angeles, close to the north-side bases. Redwood's liveliest evenings are an hour south in Arcata, where students keep the brewpubs around the plaza busy, a longer trip from a campsite in the groves.

These are two of the great wild landscapes of the Pacific coast, and the difference is breadth against intensity. Olympic packs three worlds into one park: glaciated mountains around Mount Olympus with wildflower meadows at Hurricane Ridge, mossy temperate rainforest in the Hoh and Quinault, and a roadless coast for multi-day tidal hikes. Marmots and bears live in the high country.

Redwood has no mountains to match, but it has the tallest trees on earth, rising past 100m in Stout Grove, Lady Bird Johnson Grove and the remote Tall Trees Grove, and Fern Canyon is unlike anything in Olympic. Both have Roosevelt elk and passing grey whales.

Olympic has the stronger outings, and one stands well above anything near Redwood: the car ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, a capital city with a harbour and gardens about an hour and a half away (bring a passport). Port Townsend, the ferry to Whidbey Island and the lavender farms of Sequim add more variety.

Redwood's excursions are to small towns: Trinidad on its headland, Arcata and Eureka an hour south, and Ferndale's painted Victorian dairy village beyond them. They are pleasant drives, but none is a destination of the first rank.

Both work for outdoor families and both share the same limits: cold, unsafe surf and plenty of rain. Olympic offers tide pooling, short trails such as the Hall of Mosses and Marymere Falls, a marine life centre in Port Angeles and a drive-through animal park near Sequim, but its areas lie hours apart.

Redwood keeps children's favourites closer together, with flat grove loops, log scrambles and creek wading in Fern Canyon, Junior Ranger programmes, a gondola up into the forest near Klamath and a canopy walkway at Eureka's zoo.

Redwood is noticeably easier to cover. Its parks run along about 70km of coast, the main groves are short drives apart, and the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway through old growth is a pleasure in itself. The only slower stretches are the gravel roads to Stout Grove and Fern Canyon.

Olympic needs far more driving. No road crosses the mountains, so Highway 101 loops around the edge with long spur roads in, the Hoh is about two hours from Port Angeles, and most visitors split their stay between two bases. Arriving from Seattle usually means a ferry as well.

Neither is a shopping trip, but the souvenirs differ. Olympic's best browsing is Port Townsend's Victorian main street of galleries, antiques and books, with lavender from Sequim. Redwood's roadside stalls sell redwood burl carvings and chainsaw sculptures, and Eureka and Arcata add galleries and Native basketry and jewellery.

Redwood is the cheaper stay. National park entry is free, the state campgrounds among the redwoods cost little, and Crescent City's motels are modest; only the summer rooms close to the groves fill early.

Olympic charges an entry fee, and its historic lodges and coastal cabins are expensive and booked well ahead. Camping and the motels of Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks keep it manageable, but the longer distances also mean more fuel.

Olympic has more of a season to plan around, centred on Port Townsend in summer, where Fort Worden's arts centre hosts week-long jazz, blues and fiddle festivals and the town keeps a small professional theatre. Port Angeles adds a community symphony.

Around Redwood, performances are occasional and an hour away, mainly touring acts at Arcata's university during term and Eureka's small symphony and community theatre.

Olympic offers more to unwind with because it has an actual bathing place: the mineral pools of Sol Duc hot springs at the end of a forest valley, a simple open-air soak from spring to autumn. Add the lakeside lodges and valleys without a phone signal, and switching off comes easily.

Redwood has no springs or established spas, just hourly hot tubs and saunas in Arcata and a few lodge massages. Its calm comes from the hush of the old-growth groves, a quiet form of forest bathing rather than anywhere to be looked after.