Page, Arizona or Rapid City?

Page wins this comfortably because it sits on Lake Powell. In summer the water is warm enough for long swims, Lone Rock has open sand you can drive onto, and the best moments come from jumping off sandstone into deep coves from a boat or kayak. There are no lifeguards, though, and the shoreline shifts with the lake level.

Rapid City's swimming is a mountain-lake affair. Sheridan Lake, Pactola and Sylvan Lake have clear but cooler water and small gravel or sandy shores, and they make a pleasant pause on a drive through the pines rather than a reason to come.

Neither town is a food destination, but Rapid City gives you more choice. Downtown around Main Street has brewpubs, coffee houses and a few ambitious kitchens, and you can try South Dakota chislic, bison steaks and wineries out in the hills.

Page offers diners, barbecue and chains that feed tour groups, with little coffee culture and nothing late. Each town has its own version of the frybread taco: Navajo in Page and Lakota in Rapid City. In Page it is the one dish really worth seeking out.

Rapid City has more to see indoors. The Journey Museum traces the Black Hills from geology to the gold rush, the School of Mines holds fine Badlands fossils, and a walk past the bronze presidents on downtown corners fills an easy hour.

Page was built in the 1950s for the Glen Canyon Dam builders, and its sights are largely the dam's visitor centre and a small museum devoted to John Wesley Powell. Its deeper cultural interest comes from the surrounding Navajo Nation rather than anything in town.

Rapid City has the livelier evenings, though that is relative. A few blocks around Main Street Square hold brewpubs, sports bars and country-music bars, and in early August the Sturgis rally keeps the whole region loud and late.

In Page, a brewpub and a handful of bars are quiet well before midnight, and most visitors are in bed early for sunrise canyon tours. The real night out there is the star-filled desert sky.

Both are superb bases for the outdoors, but Page's surroundings are the more astonishing. Antelope Canyon's glowing slot walls, the loop of Horseshoe Bend, Rainbow Bridge reached by water and the permit-only Wave form a red-rock desert where much of the exploring happens by boat or raft.

Rapid City offers a greener, gentler wild. You get ponderosa forest and granite spires in the Black Hills, bison herds in Custer State Park, long guided tours through Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, and the Badlands an hour east. Hikers, cyclists on the Mickelson Trail and climbers will find more varied ground here, along with snow in winter.

Rapid City is far better for excursions to actual places. Mount Rushmore is half an hour away, and the Crazy Horse Memorial, the gold-rush streets of Deadwood, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs and the Minuteman Missile silo can each fill a satisfying day.

Around Page, the land is the attraction and towns are scarce. Lees Ferry's pioneer buildings, the Betatakin cliff dwellings and the small Western town of Kanab are worth the trip, but beyond them the drives are long.

Rapid City is the easier choice with children. Generations of families have toured the Black Hills, and there is plenty aimed at them: a drive-through bear park, Storybook Island, Dinosaur Park, cave tours and digging at the Mammoth Site, plus motels and campgrounds geared to children.

Page suits outdoorsy families who will enjoy a lake day at Lone Rock or a short Antelope Canyon tour. There are no attractions made for children, and sheer, unfenced viewpoints and steep canyon ladders call for close supervision.

In both places you will need a car. Page's small strip can be walked, but the marinas, Horseshoe Bend and the parks are spread out, and the nearest major airports are hours away, so most people arrive on a road trip.

Rapid City has a walkable brick downtown and a small bus system, and seasonal tour buses reach the main sights for anyone without a car. The hill roads, with their tunnels and hairpins, are a pleasure in their own right.

Native craft is the thing worth buying in both places. Around Page that means Navajo silver and turquoise jewellery, rugs and pottery from trading posts and roadside stalls, often bought straight from the person who made them. Beyond that there are gift shops, outdoor stores and supermarkets for stocking a houseboat.

In Rapid City the choice is wider. Its own speciality is Black Hills gold, worked in tri-colour grape-leaf designs, and downtown galleries sell Lakota quillwork, beadwork and star quilts alongside Western boots and hats. A regional mall covers everyday needs, though neither town justifies a trip for shopping alone.

Rapid City is the cheaper of the two. Motels and meals are reasonable, and several sights are free, but rooms get very expensive during the August motorcycle rally, and you will still pay for car hire and park entry.

Page costs more because its main sights carry a charge. Antelope Canyon can only be seen on a paid guided tour, boats and houseboats are expensive, and rooms are scarce in the busy months. Camping at Lone Rock or Wahweap, or visiting in winter, keeps the bill down.

Page has no theatre, concert hall or regular programme at all. A visitor might catch a Navajo dance presentation or dinner show put on for tourists, or a local band in a bar, and that is about it.

Evenings around Rapid City offer far more. The Black Hills Symphony Orchestra plays a regular season, the civic centre brings in touring concerts, rodeos and Broadway shows, and in summer a long-established playhouse stages plays among the pines of Custer State Park. The large autumn powwow at the civic centre is the performance most worth timing a trip around.

Neither place is built around spas, and Page is the harder of the two to rest in. Its calm comes from the desert itself, with quiet evenings, huge views and a motel pool after a hot day, but most stays are shaped by pre-dawn canyon tours and long drives.

Rapid City has one real thing to offer here. About an hour south is the old bathing town of Hot Springs, where you can float in water warmed by the springs themselves, indoors and in any season, as people have done for well over a century. Page's motel pools and desert evenings offer nothing like that slow, warm soak. Add a few nights in a cabin or lodge in the hills, and Rapid City is the easier place to slow down.