Most rental car company's don't allow you to drive on the backside.

Drove the whole loop twice and loved it. I drove that "pothole goat trail mess", it's actually in less bad state than many of the roads at home so I didn't care lol, and it's only bad on a short distance. The roads where I live in Quebec are terrible, have to get repairs on my car wheels every couple years (things like tie rods get shot). I've also driven worse dirt roads. We have very cold winters and warm summers, lots of freezing and thawing cycles these days as we're getting close to spring, and the cities do a shit jobs at repairing the roads and seem to always go for the lowest bidders, so the roads are often awful.

I feel like people who only ever drive on beautiful smooth paved roads don't realize how much even a small sedan can handle, so they get very stressed by a bumpy road. Yeah it's better if you drive that every day to have a larger 4x4 vehicle, but the road on its own has little danger, just try to at least avoid the bigger potholes.