Are you only looking at cross bikes? No road bikes? What kind of riding do you plan to do? FWIW, I hate riding on gravel. I try my best to use my race bike and race tires (with luckily bombproof, non-racer type wheels) as an excuse to avoid gravel and off-roading at all costs. Last weekend, however, I had to follow the group over MILES of hilly gravel roads in WV. Banked, hilly turns were the scariest. I don't know what was going on. Is that how WV prepares for winter? Lots of paved roads had just gotten truckloads of loose gravel dumped on them. Sometimes, the gravel was really thick and hard to plow through. We came to some hard packed dirt for a while the next day with less gravel, and even though there were some washerboard sections and the occasional bad pothole, I really enjoyed the dirt over the thick gravel the day before. My bike handled it just fine, though my hands are recovering a bit from the vibration. Still, the gravel was not any worse than some of the chewed up paved stuff we rolled over in terms of pain factor around the thumbs.

Anyway, if you're going to be doing mostly road riding in the spring with bits of gravel and unpaved roads, a road bike could be just fine. It won't be good for slogging through mud and stuff where you'd want more brake clearance. You can also easily run slightly wider tires on a lot of road bikes if you want some more rough terrain stability. Just adjust your brakes so that you can get the wheels on and off if it's a tight fit.

You may be able to find a lot more options in your price range when you look at general road bikes versus cross.

Also, were you comparing the aluminum Tricross to an aluminum Cannondale? Specialized A1 aluminum or E5? The E5 frame might get you closer to a Cannondale feel, but if the problem is in the geometry, then the others are right: The bike will get twitchier feeling when the geometry is more aggressive such that the rear end feels more connected. The problem with front end twitchiness could have more to do with fit. Having a longer, lower stem will make the front end seem more stable. Having your weight centered properly on the bike with the right fit will also make you feel better.

You may also want to try some bikes out of your price range for now just to compare. For example, when I was looking at bikes, I tried some Treks. I hated how twitchy and uncomfortable they felt. I couldn't really explain it, but we didn't get a long. The shop put me out on a Madone that I couldn't afford, and I realized, ok, now we're getting somewhere. Then I went and looked for a manufacturer that made a frame that felt that good or better at a cheaper price point. In my case, geometry wasn't much of an issue, because I liked Specialized bikes that were more aggressive (Tarmac) and more relaxed (Roubaix) way better than the Trek bikes. I felt like it was more bang for the buck. You may feel like that with Cannondale. Or a totally different company. If you can't go to another shop for now, see what else they have in your size that you can sit on and try as much as you can. That should help you narrow down certain characteristics about each bike that you like and dislike.