Salt Lake City or Steamboat Springs?

Neither city is anywhere near a coast, and in both swimmers head for mountain reservoirs. Salt Lake City has the more unusual offer: on Antelope Island you can float without effort in the brine of the Great Salt Lake. In summer, warmer reservoirs such as Jordanelle and Pineview add sandy patches of shore and paddleboards.

Steamboat's lakes, Steamboat Lake and Stagecoach, stay cold and the swimming season is short. The classic summer water outing there is tubing down the Yampa through town.

Salt Lake City has more to explore at the table. Its local quirks, fry sauce, pastrami burgers, fried scones and dirty sodas, are fun to try once. The real interest lies in the Mexican, Pacific Islander, Peruvian and Vietnamese kitchens along State Street and across the valley.

Steamboat eats like a ranching resort. Lincoln Avenue and the ski base serve steak, Colorado lamb, pizza and Mexican food, which is hearty and welcome after a day outside. The range is narrow, though, and there is none of the immigrant cooking that gives Salt Lake its variety.

Salt Lake City has a real sightseeing programme. Temple Square anchors it, with the granite temple and the domed Tabernacle with its organ. The Capitol, the painted interior of the Cathedral of the Madeleine and the dinosaur halls of the Natural History Museum fill out two days.

Steamboat's story of homesteaders and ski jumpers is genuine but compact. A walk past the western storefronts of Lincoln Avenue, the Tread of Pioneers Museum and a look at Howelsen Hill take an afternoon at most.

Neither is a place for big nights out, and Utah's liquor rules keep Salt Lake City's bars more restrained than in most American cities. Even so, it offers more choice: breweries and bars downtown and in the Granary District, a few dance clubs and a long-standing gay scene.

Steamboat's evenings follow the lifts. Après-ski starts at the gondola base, then moves to the saloons and brewpubs of Lincoln Avenue, which are lively in the peak weeks and quiet for the rest of the year.

Both are outstanding mountain bases, and the difference is one of kind. From Salt Lake City, four ski resorts in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons are under an hour away, with Park City just over the ridge, and peaks above 3,000m rise straight from town. The country to the west adds something Steamboat has nothing like: the bison on Antelope Island and the white expanse of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Steamboat puts a single mountain on the doorstep, with its famous Champagne Powder in the aspen glades. Its setting is quieter and wilder, with the Mount Zirkel Wilderness, Fish Creek Falls, elk and moose, and fly fishing on the Yampa, and no city in between.

Salt Lake City gives you somewhere to go when you want a town rather than a trail. Park City's Victorian Main Street is about forty minutes away, and Midway and Heber lie in the next valley. To the north, Ogden's 25th Street and the Golden Spike site make longer outings, though the famous national parks need an overnight stay.

Around Steamboat the nearby places are small ranching towns such as Hayden and Oak Creek, worth a coffee stop at most. Vail, Grand Lake and Denver are two to three hours of mountain driving away, too far for a comfortable day. A day out from Steamboat therefore usually means heading into the hills rather than to another town.

Both welcome children, but Salt Lake City gives a family far more to do off the slopes. There is Hogle Zoo, the aquarium, the Discovery Gateway children's museum, the planetarium and Lagoon's roller coasters, though they are spread across the valley and easiest to reach by car.

Steamboat works only if the children love being outside. The ski school, the slides and climbing wall at Old Town Hot Springs, tubing on the Yampa and the rodeo are great fun. There is no zoo, aquarium or science museum to fall back on when the weather turns, though, and the altitude can tire young children at first.

Neither is easy without a car, but the problems differ. Salt Lake City is a huge grid of wide streets and long blocks. Light rail runs to the airport and the University, and commuter trains go to Ogden and Provo, but the canyons and the zoo still mean driving, and canyon traffic crawls on powder days.

Steamboat is small. Its flat downtown and the ski base are linked by the town bus, and from many lodgings you can walk to the gondola. The catch is the mountain roads to the hot springs and lakes, which no bus serves and which in winter need proper tyres and some nerve.

Salt Lake City has proper shops: the department stores of City Creek Center, the old streetcar barns of Trolley Square, independent and vintage shops around 9th and 9th and in Sugar House, and excellent local outdoor-gear shops.

Steamboat's shopping is an hour on Lincoln Avenue among western-wear stores, galleries and ski shops. The centrepiece is a family outfitter that has sold boots and hats there since the early twentieth century.

Salt Lake City is the cheaper base by a clear margin. City hotels are moderately priced, Temple Square and many other sights are free, and light rail costs little. Ski tickets, a hire car and lodging in the canyons still make a winter week expensive.

Steamboat charges resort prices across the board, and they are highest around Christmas and the spring school breaks. Summer and the quieter seasons in between bring the bill down, and self-catering condos help, but it is never a budget choice.

Salt Lake City has a real year-round programme for a city of its size. The Tabernacle Choir's rehearsals and broadcasts with the great organ are open to the public, and there is the Utah Symphony at Abravanel Hall, Utah Opera, Ballet West and touring Broadway shows.

Steamboat's music is concentrated in summer. The Strings Music Festival fills its pavilion with chamber music, jazz and bluegrass, and Perry-Mansfield stages student theatre and dance. In winter it comes down to bands in the bars and a community orchestra.

Here Steamboat clearly leads. The town is named after a spring and Old Town Hot Springs sits in the centre. Strawberry Park's rock-lined pools, about 11km up a mountain road, make a soak on a snowy evening the highlight of many trips.

Salt Lake City has no bathing tradition of its own. Its most memorable soak is the warm crater pool at Homestead Crater in Midway, an hour away, and otherwise relaxing mostly means the resort spas in Park City.