Unfortunatly they are making SUV's designed for what the majority of people want, a tall or big car. Its difficult to find a decent one anyomre.
Stay away from AWD, its too unpredictable in anything but a light rain, the system that transfers power from one end to the other gets confused when you start going off the pavement.
Your best bet is to stick with a basic truck/frame based vehicle with a real transfer case with low range. Somthing like a quad cab small/midsized/full size truck for example. You still get close to the same gas milage as one of the toy SUV's but get far more capability.