Hello, you really should consider staying with a student. The admissions office will hook you up with a first year and you wouldn't be imposing at all. I looked at our schedule and it is amazingly clear after the morning of the 3rd. If you don't stay with a student, you can at least have one show you around. If you were really bored, you could even come to class with us 🙂 One interesting way to kill afternoon, is to walk through the sky walk. There is this glass enclosed sky walk that covers nearly all of downtown. Then there is this quaint little area in West Des Moines with small shops called Valley Junction. The capital building is always interesting, the roof is done entirely in gold leaf. I imagine Becky Grissom or Melinda from admissions could give you more hints. As for the hotel thing, well you know my first advice but you could also look in to the chain places like the Best Western, there is one of those about 2 miles from campus? I would agree that it is much cheaper to fly into Omaha or KC. From Omaha, you would just have to get on I-80 and head east, you would hit Des Moines in about 2 1/2 hours. I hope this helps a bit.
Katie
