Commuting sounds like the best alternative for your situation. It's lucky that's your schools are only 70 miles apart =) The majority of my dental class has about a 20 min. commute, but i know of at least 4 people who come in from outside of the city - 2 are living at home with relatives and two are married and living about an hr. away. I'm sure there are more doing similar things, and once you get in the groove it probably won't bother you much at all. I'm not sure how it will take to drive the 35 miles for you, but really it's prob. not worse than an hr. or so... and that's a normal drive to work for a lot of people. Sorry I can't give a personal perspective here - i live 4 blocks from school.... but i used to drive 45+ minutes to work every day, and it really wasn't a big deal. It'll just make you better at managing your time at school. Quite a few of my classmates pack a lunch and dinner and then study after class or work on lab projects. Then when they go home they can really be home with their families..... not just at home studying =)
Good luck figuring everything out!!!
