Looking for opinions on an upcoming trip!

My wife and I had plans to backpack Isle Royale in mid-September, but life got in the way of planning ahead and we (literally) missed the boat on being able to reserve a ferry. Sea planes are a little on the expensive side. Now we have about 8 days off in mid-September to figure out what we want to do!

We live in Michigan and basically see two options in front of us. We either drive to a national park to establish a nice base camp and do day hikes, or we fly into another state to have a more minimalist camping experience/backpacking.

One of the options we're considering that's drivable is Shenandoah National Park, but we just went to New River Gorge last year and have both been to the Smokies (her having been to SMNP pretty recently, mostly to visit Gatlinburg with family). I'm a little worried that while Shenandoah will likely be a lot of fun, it may be pretty similar to most of the scenery we get around Michigan and at NRG/SMNP.

We have yet to fly to a destination to camp and being honest it seems cumbersome. Logistically there's a few ways you could go, but any way I slice it, it seems a little difficult to get all of our gear to another state to establish a base camp. We'd rather have a more robust camp to come back to each night than backpacking for a full week. Places we considered flying to include Rocky Mountain National Park, Olympic National Park, or Acadia National Park. We'd really prefer to camp almost every night of the trip, maybe getting a hotel/cabin for the last night or two to relax more. Money is a big motivator in why we'd rather camp, although we do really enjoy camping for the sake of camping.

So I guess what I'm asking here is this- has anyone found Shenandoah to be uniquely different from other nearby parks, or should we just bite the bullet and spend a little more to fly somewhere more unique with a bunch of camping gear? Any advice related to flying with gear is helpful as well.

Thank you!