One of the most important things I learned about heading off onto less hospitable roads is to take it slow. The silly commercials that feature a vehicle bouncing furiously across a wet meadow with mud flying may make for good marketing, but it's a bad way to drive. The landscape gets torn up, rutted and horribly damaged, and you stand a fairly good chance of damaging both the SUV and yourself. If you approach an obstacle, before you just try to drive right over it, stop, get out and take a closer look. Sometimes a harmless-looking rock can become an extremely destructive object.
Water is never something to be trifled with.
That car will likely never run again. Once water gets into the engine, it's probably dead. Your SUV is better able to handle some water than most regular cars, but water that looks fairly shallow can turn out to be awfully deep. It's very deceptive. Stop, get out and check the depth all the way across.