Orange Beach or Pigeon Forge?

The beach is the main thing Orange Beach offers. Its long quartz-sand shore runs along a warm, clear Gulf that you can swim in from late spring to autumn, with quieter stretches at Alabama Point and in the state park. Rip currents and the summer storm season are the catches.

Pigeon Forge has no beach at all. Swimming there means Douglas Lake, the boulder pools in the national park's streams, or the water park beside Dollywood, which is fine for cooling off but nothing you would plan a trip around.

Neither town is somewhere to travel to for food, but Orange Beach has the better ingredients. Its waterside fish houses serve shrimp, Royal Reds, chargrilled oysters and snapper from the local boats, so a few good seafood dinners are easy to plan.

Pigeon Forge eats heartily rather than well: pancake breakfasts, fried-chicken buffets, barbecue and chain steakhouses, with moonshine tastings and fudge as the local touches. For more ambitious cooking you would drive to Knoxville or Asheville.

Neither place offers much culture, but Pigeon Forge has a little more to look at. The working Old Mill of 1830 and the crafts demonstrations at Dollywood touch on Appalachian heritage, and the log cabins and churches in the national park go further. Its other sights are novelty attractions such as the half-scale Titanic.

Orange Beach has only a small museum of Native American and fishing history. The forts and old quarters of the coast all mean a day out.

Orange Beach has the livelier evenings. The Flora-Bama roadhouse on the state line is a Gulf Coast institution with sand underfoot, and in season the bars around the marina and Perdido Pass stay busy, especially at spring break. Out of season, though, it is quiet.

Pigeon Forge winds down at around ten. Its evenings are built around families, with dinner shows and go-karts, and adults who want a drink end up in a brewpub, a moonshine tasting room or the bars of Gatlinburg.

Pigeon Forge has the much bigger landscape. Half an hour away, the Great Smoky Mountains rise to forested ridges over 2,000m, with walks from Laurel Falls up to Mount LeConte, black bears in Cades Cove and the Appalachian Trail along the crest. Autumn colour and spring wildflowers bring a second reason to visit.

Orange Beach's outdoors is flat and watery: dunes, salt marsh, bay kayaking, dolphin cruises, offshore reef fishing and a long paved trail past alligator ponds. It suits paddlers, anglers and birders more than walkers.

The two have similar day-trip lists, both needing a car, but the destinations differ in character. From Orange Beach the trips are historical and coastal: Pensacola's Spanish quarter, naval aviation museum and brick forts, Mobile's antebellum streets and the ferry to Dauphin Island.

Pigeon Forge looks to the mountains and beyond. You can visit Gatlinburg's craft studios, Knoxville's Market Square, the Cherokee museum over Newfound Gap, and, for the longest day, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.

Both towns are built for families. The choice is between a beach and a theme park. Orange Beach keeps children busy with sandcastles and shallow, calm water, plus dolphin boats and a Ferris wheel at the marina, and condos with kitchens make it easy to settle in.

Pigeon Forge is built around Dollywood and its water park, with mountain coasters, go-karts, zip lines and easy waterfall walks to fill other days. Large cabins sleep several families. Both mean driving along one busy road, and summer heat takes a toll in each.

You will need a car in both. Orange Beach is strung along a single coastal highway with almost no useful buses, although bikes work well on the paved trails.

Pigeon Forge has a slight edge in its Parkway trolley, which runs through to Gatlinburg, but it is slow, does not reach the hillside cabins and won't get you to a trailhead. Traffic jams in summer are a feature of both.

Pigeon Forge is the better place to shop. Alongside the outlet centres towards Sevierville there are real mountain crafts: pottery and stone-ground cornmeal at the Old Mill, and brooms, baskets and leatherwork from the studios above Gatlinburg.

Orange Beach sells beachwear, souvenirs and fishing gear. For brands, visitors drive to the outlet mall in Foley, and there are no local crafts to take home.

Pigeon Forge goes further on a given budget. There are thousands of motel rooms and cabins, the breakfast houses and buffets are cheap, and the national park costs almost nothing to walk in. The money goes on Dollywood tickets and dinner shows.

Orange Beach is pricier in season, with beachfront condos, seafood dinners and a hire car all adding up, though the beach itself is free. It becomes good value in winter, when rates fall and the town goes quiet.

Pigeon Forge has many more shows. Dozens of Parkway theatres put on country and gospel revues, comedy, magic and dinner spectacles every night, and Dollywood's stages carry bluegrass and Appalachian music through the day.

Orange Beach's live entertainment is touring concerts at the marina amphitheatre, cover bands in the beach bars, and the Frank Brown songwriters' festival each November, which is a treat for anyone who cares about lyrics. Neither town has serious theatre or classical music.

Unwinding in Orange Beach means an empty stretch of sand in the early morning and a sunset over the back bays. In Pigeon Forge it means a private hot tub on a cabin porch, looking out over wooded ridges. Each has a few resort and day spas for a massage, but there is no bathing tradition to build a stay around in either.

Orange Beach is calmest from autumn to spring, because summer weekends and spring break are loud. In Pigeon Forge the calm depends on where you sleep. If you book a cabin high on the hillside, with a fireplace and rocking chairs, you are well away from the neon and traffic of the Parkway.