Rapid City or Whitefish?

Rapid City's swimming is in reservoirs and lakes out in the hills, such as Sheridan, Pactola and Sylvan, with small gravel or sandy shores. Most people stop for a quick dip during a day of driving.

Whitefish does it better, with City Beach on Whitefish Lake at the edge of town, a sandy strip and a swimming dock. Flathead Lake's very clear water and pebbly state park shores are forty minutes south. Neither place has warm water outside high summer.

The two eat at much the same level, but the food has different roots. Around Rapid City you find South Dakota specialities, chislic in the bars and Indian tacos on Lakota fry bread, plus brewpubs downtown and wineries in the hills. Away from the centre, the highway chains take over.

Whitefish keeps most of its eating on Central Avenue, where trout, elk and wood-fired pizza share the menus and huckleberries turn up in everything in late summer. The street is pleasant, but after a week you will be going back to the same few places.

Rapid City has much more to see in town. You can walk downtown past the bronze statues of every president, learn about Lakota history and the gold rush at the Journey Museum, look at Badlands fossils at the School of Mines, and see Cold War aircraft at the air and space museum.

Whitefish has little beyond its timber Great Northern depot and the small railway and logging museum inside it. Here culture is an hour's diversion, not a reason to stay longer.

Evenings are low-key in both, with no club scene, but the timing differs. Rapid City's brewpubs and country-music bars around Main Street Square are quiet for most of the year, apart from early August, when the Sturgis rally makes the whole region loud and late.

Whitefish's saloons and taprooms on Central Avenue get busiest in winter, when the après-ski crowd comes down from the mountain, and on summer patios.

Rapid City has fine scenery: granite spires along the Needles Highway, bison herds in Custer State Park, Wind Cave and Jewel Cave underground, and the Badlands an hour east. The Mickelson Trail is a long, easy route for cyclists.

Whitefish goes a level higher. Glacier National Park has alpine peaks, glacial lakes, the Highline Trail and grizzlies, and Big Mountain is a proper ski area, not the small hill near Lead. The only drawback is that the high country is open only from July to September.

Rapid City has far more to drive out to. Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial are close, Deadwood's gold-rush streets are an hour north, and to the south and east there are the Mammoth Site, the Minuteman Missile silo and the roadside drugstore at Wall.

From Whitefish, the outings are mainly into Glacier and the wilderness. The nearby towns offer smaller things: the Conrad Mansion in Kalispell, Bigfork's galleries, and the mission church at St Ignatius.

Rapid City has been a family road-trip stop for generations and has the attractions to show for it: a reptile park, a drive-through park with bears and wolves, Storybook Island, Dinosaur Park, gold panning and cave tours. Motels with pools and campgrounds are everywhere.

Whitefish works well for active families, with ski school in winter and a zip line and alpine slide on the summer slopes. There are no zoos or theme parks, though, so children who don't like hiking or paddling may get bored.

You will need a car in both, but Whitefish manages better without one. Long-distance trains stop at the depot on the edge of downtown, a free shuttle runs to the ski area in winter, and Central Avenue is easy on foot.

Rapid City's buses serve residents rather than visitors and do not go to Mount Rushmore or the parks. Seasonal tour buses are the only alternative to driving. The upside is that driving there is easy, and the roads through the hills are part of the pleasure.

Neither is a shopping destination, but what you take home is different. Rapid City has Black Hills gold jewellery with its grape-leaf designs, Lakota quillwork and star quilts, and Western boots. Whitefish has outdoor outfitters, wildlife and landscape art, and huckleberry jam, with anything bigger in Kalispell.

Rapid City is noticeably cheaper. It has plenty of reasonable motels and casual meals, and free sights like the presidents' statues and Dinosaur Park. The exception is the rally week in August, when rooms for miles around become very expensive.

Whitefish charges resort-town prices. Rooms are scarce in summer and the ski season, and meals cost what they do in any American mountain resort. Staying in Kalispell or Columbia Falls, or coming in spring or autumn, keeps costs down.

Both have a small, mostly local programme of performances. Rapid City has the more distinctive events: powwows, especially the large one each autumn at the civic centre, and summer plays in a playhouse among the pines of Custer State Park.

Whitefish's best season is summer, with a professional summer theatre company, the valley symphony's festival in Kalispell, and free outdoor concerts.

The two are close, but they relax you in different ways. From Rapid City you can drive an hour to Hot Springs, where a historic pool fed by warm springs has drawn bathers since the 1890s. Whitefish has no thermal water nearby. What it does have is lodge and resort spas, yoga studios, and quiet mornings by the lake.