Palm Desert or Taos?

Neither town has a beach, so this is not a reason to choose either. The difference is what water means on the trip. In Palm Desert it is the resort pool, often heated in winter and central to the day, with the Pacific a two-hour drive over the mountains. In Taos the Rio Grande is for rafting, the mountain lakes stay cold, and a hot spring or a hotel pool is as close as you get to a swim.

The two are on a par for eating out, but the food itself is very different. Palm Desert offers resort dining: dependable steakhouses and Californian bistros along El Paseo, good for a long outdoor dinner, though one menu looks much like the next. The regional flavour is out east in the Indio taquerias and the date groves, with date shakes as the local treat.

Taos has a clearer identity. Northern New Mexican cooking, with red or green chile on everything, horno bread from the Pueblo and blue-corn dishes, is served with conviction around the plaza and down towards Ranchos. Beyond that kitchen the choice is thin, so variety-seekers will tire of it about as quickly as of Palm Desert's resort menus.

Taos is far richer here. Taos Pueblo has been lived in for around a thousand years and is still home to a Tiwa-speaking community, and the San Francisco de Asís church painted by O'Keeffe sits a short drive south. Add the Harwood, the Millicent Rogers Museum and the old houses of the art colony, and you have several unhurried days.

Palm Desert is a postwar resort town with little history of its own. Its offer is the sculpture garden at the Palm Springs Art Museum branch and the galleries of El Paseo, which fill a morning. For mid-century modern architecture you drive twenty minutes to Palm Springs.

Both are early-to-bed places, but Palm Desert gives you more options after dark. Its wine bars and patio lounges around El Paseo close early, yet the valley's tribal casinos stay open into the small hours and Palm Springs has livelier bars, including a well-known gay scene.

Taos offers a margarita in an old adobe hotel bar, a brewery taproom or a saloon band, plus après-ski up the canyon in winter. Most nights there end soon after dinner, with nowhere to carry on.

Both are landscape destinations, but Taos is the more complete one. The Sangre de Cristo mountains, the deep Rio Grande gorge and the sagebrush plateau give it demanding skiing in winter, Wheeler Peak and alpine lakes in summer, Taos Box rafting in spring and golden aspens in autumn. The altitude asks for a day or two of rest when you arrive.

Palm Desert has dramatic surroundings of its own: steep trails up the Santa Rosa Mountains, fan-palm oases in the Indian Canyons, the tramway up to pine forest and Joshua Tree an hour away. Its outdoor season stops in summer, though, when the heat confines activity to dawn, and golf takes up much of the valley floor.

Taos has the more rewarding excursions. Santa Fe is the main one, best reached along the High Road through Truchas, Las Trampas and the sanctuary at Chimayó, and O'Keeffe country at Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch is a similar distance west. Bandelier's cliff dwellings make a longer but worthwhile day.

From Palm Desert the obvious outing is Palm Springs, only twenty minutes away, and then Temecula's tasting rooms, cool Idyllwild, the old film set at Pioneertown and the odd painted hillside of Salvation Mountain. These are enjoyable but slighter outings, and the big coastal cities are too far for a comfortable day.

Palm Desert is the easier choice with children. The Living Desert, with giraffes and cheetahs, is right in town, the Palm Springs tramway thrills older children, and resort pools with slides fill the hours between outings. Summer middays are the one thing to avoid.

Taos works for outdoor families who ski or ride: there is a respected ski school, gentle float trips on the Rio Grande, horse riding and a public pool. It has no zoo or anything else built for young visitors, and the altitude can wear children out at first.

Both need a hire car, and neither is much better than the other. Palm Desert is a flat sprawl of boulevards where only a few blocks of El Paseo invite walking, but traffic is light, parking is easy and ride-hailing covers evenings out.

Taos has a small, genuinely walkable historic core around the plaza and Bent Street. Everything else, from the Pueblo to the ski valley, is spread across the valley, and most visitors arrive with a drive of about two and a half hours from Albuquerque.

Palm Desert has the wider choice. El Paseo is a palm-lined boulevard of upscale boutiques, jewellers and galleries where browsing is a social outing, with a mall for the chains and a big designer outlet half an hour west.

Taos is narrower but more distinctive: turquoise and silver, micaceous Pueblo pottery, Rio Grande weaving, carved santos and painting in the art-colony tradition, sometimes bought straight from the maker at the Pueblo. Collectors will linger, and fashion shoppers will find almost nothing.

Both cost what American resort towns cost, with tips on every meal and a hire car on top, and neither is a bargain. Their cheaper windows fall at different times. Palm Desert gets much cheaper in the June to September heat and is dearest in the winter high season. Taos is gentlest in spring and late autumn, between ski and summer seasons, and its simple motels and New Mexican diners keep a modest stay manageable.

Palm Desert offers more to book. The McCallum Theatre brings touring Broadway, ballet, orchestras and well-known singers through the winter, casinos and an arena add big concerts, and Coachella and Stagecoach take over Indio for a few spring weekends.

Taos has less, but what it has is unusual: Pueblo dances on feast days such as San Gerónimo, watched under strict rules, plus a summer chamber music festival and a small community arts centre. On most nights the only live music is a local band in a bar.

Palm Desert has a slight edge, because the valley is built for this: resort spas, massages, pool afternoons and the mineral-spring hotels of Desert Hot Springs half an hour away, all under dry winter sun.

Taos offers a wilder kind of rest. You can soak in the historic outdoor pools at Ojo Caliente, hike down to the primitive springs beside the Rio Grande, or stay at a retreat centre and take in the silence of the plateau. It is less pampering than Palm Desert, but it is a deeper retreat.