If you are talking about overnight trips, that is light weight touring, most any bike can take the load. But the older bikes often are not as stiff as the newer bikes if you wanted to load it down more.
I agree with the comments above about tires. I often ride on gravel with 37mm wide tires.
I do not know how easy it is to find a taller quill stem. Raising the bars higher, one option would be a quill stem to threadless adapter. And a threadless stem with a higher angle. This is one of the quill to threadless adapters, there are others.
https://velo-orange.com/collections/...s-stem-adaptor
You might also be able to find an adjustable angle quill stem.
The best bike is the bike that fits, if you need to adjust your bar position, get that done first.