Go with 6 meters!!!
My first taste of 6 meters was an old RCA LD "Waffle Iron" on 52.525 MHz. My elmer had it in his car and made contacts that I knew (at the time) to be too far for 2 meters without a repeater. At about the same time, my hometown fire department was on 33.86 and just began transitioning to 154.445. All of the interesting stuff was still on low band, with other stations coming in from Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and occasionally much further. The old guys on the FD would tell me about DXing on 33.86, asking the other stations where they were (seriously!). The high band channel was just local stuff and was kinda "meh." I went to the hamfests of the late 70s and bought some Gonset Communicator gonkulators which were crystal controlled AM radios and used a Heathkit VFO on them. There was still AM activity to be had then; 6 meters was THE popular band before 2 meters and repeaters took off. And that was BEFORE TV went digital and mostly migrated to UHF, so people used to go through great pains to mitigate TVI just to get on.
So, through two QTHs, I had a 7 element yagi up maybe 40 feet. Now, at a third, I have an M2 3 element yagi up. I have a variety of FM radios for 52.525 and another discrete frequency my family and I use to communicate, although I'm trying to standardize around Syntor X-9000s. I have a DB-201 folded vertical groundplane antenna for that. My SSB station consists of an Icom 751A with a Down East Microwave transverter (a kit that you can build!) that goes from a 10 meter IF to 6 meters. I have a Mirage amp and a Clegg Apollo 6 amp for when I feel like I want to run around 300 Watts. I also have a trusty Yaesu FT-620B which I picked up years ago that is ready any time without having to pull wires and jumper things around to change from HF to 6. I worked Europe, Cuba, and South America with that FT-620B with just 10 Watts PEP and the 7 element antenna. I went on to take my section with my 6 meter score in the June 1998 VHF contest (I stayed up for the entire 24 hr. period and was working anyone and everyone).
There are two types of hams in this world. Those who don't get 6 (that's okay, there's plenty of other ham activities to fritter your time and effort away at if you're one of the guys who doesn't get it), and those who got bit by the bug. I think you see which one I am.
Propagation is a mixed bag. You can see spectacular results during peaks in the solar cycle, but I think activity has gone down over the years (another reason I promote 6 whenever I can). BUT, 6 is also a band where you can find auroral propagation. Get good with CW, because the auroras actually modulate your signal to where it sounds raspy. CW is perfect to get through. Pinging meteor trails with
WSJT will give you contacts when you didn't even know you had any propagation whatsoever.
Be prepared for hours of nothing. And, then, be prepared for things springing to life. My 52.525 FM radio is the sentinel for SSB activity, although there are propagation beacons you can tune to. Some people put up an M2 HO loop and leave their radios on the SSB calling frequency.
So, you know what I would do. My philosophy is that anyone can string some wire and talk on HF (in other words, "that's nice"), but if you really want to get immersed in a hobby within a hobby, 6 meters is a fantastic way of doing that.
What are you going to do?