If you are not going to be racing or doing fast downhill riding on technical trails then avoid MTB's with front shock forks, especially if you'll be spending less than $1000 for the bike. If you thinking, "well gee I want some shock absorption" then get a fat tire bike WITHOUT a front shock fork.
So why no front shock fork you scream? because cheap ones simply are not up the task of working well and following the terrain correctly for control; they also weigh a lot which means you will be lugging a tank around; they also cost more than a standard fork so in order for the bike manufacture to make a certain price point they have to cheapen the frame which translates into a heavier frame, and they cheapen components which means durability will be decreased; cheap front shock forks do not last long and are expensive to replace; also any front shock for, be it an expensive one or a cheap one, but especially a cheap one, will rob you of your wattage output to go forward which makes the bike more difficult to pedal and will tire you out faster as the rides get longer.
Problem is almost all MTB's these days have front shock forks, why? because it's a fishing lure to attract the hormone pounding male into thinking he's getting a macho bike and thus stroke his ego. And for the type of riding you'll be doing I know for a fact you don't need a front shock fork...again I can hear you screaming WHY!!?? Myself and my friends when I lived in California would ride our MTB's up and down mountain trails, some of us had full suspension, some of us had just front shocks, and some, like me, was riding hard tails and hard forks, guess what? We all did equally well, and those trails were not paths, they were quite rugged, and of course going down a mountain trail means we were going quite fast and even with a non-suspension MTB I, and others that had the same sort of bike, had no problems keeping up with the other bikes. While I do wish we had fat tire bikes back then, it may have allowed us more traction, but back then all we had was standard size MTB tires which had more to do with lack of traction then shocks can provide, and with fat tire bikes the ability to have better traction due to tire width and the ability to absorb shock due to lower PSI (15 to 20 psi) in the tires makes for a really nice bike for the conditions you mentioned.
So you can do what you want to do one of several ways and be just fine, one is to get a fat tire bike as mentioned; two is to get a hybrid bike; and three to find the hard to find rigid mountain bike like the Salsa Fargo GX 29er, one of the few rigid MTB's on the market and it cost about $1,800 but has received very high reviews, and it has fender and rack mounts, plus it has a total of 5 bottle cage mounts! This Salsa is very well set up bike if you ever want to do some bike camping.
Surly has a fat tire bike called the Krampus and is about $1,500 and weighs about 29 pounds; if you're looking for something less expensive you can get a Diamondback El Oso Fat bike for only $750 but it does weigh about 37 pounds; so as you can see the more money you spend the lighter the bike will be. If your thinking you want to spend more money then the two I've listed you could look at a Salsa Fargo Rival 1 fat tire bike which will cost you about $2,230 but this bike is really nice, it only has rear gears and it weighs just 26 pounds.
If you're thinking you don't really want a fat tire bike then you can look at hybrids or gravel bikes, neither of these will have the wider tires like the MTB's or the Fat bikes, but they can do mild off road stuff.
Read these for more entertainment value of what I've written in regards to going total rigid:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2251536/bicycle-suspension-evil
And this:
https://www.bike198.com/riding-rigid-suspension/