Okay, my friends and I need some help. We are travelling to Kansas City over Memorial Day weekend. We are coming from two different directions, so the best place for us to meet is Des Moines (or the general area). At this point, we will drop one of our cars off and continue on towards KC.

What we need some help on is: 1) a nice, easy place to meet (none of us are familiar with the area); 2) a good, safe place to leave a car for a couple days in that city.

Any help you can offer is much appreciated!

I can't give you a meeting place, but as for the car, I'd say leave it as far from the Mississippi as possible. When I drove through Des Moines a few years ago, a rainstorm (not a really bad one either) passed through and lets just say there was high water everywhere. Cars were submerged in 4-6 feet of water on the road along the river. Of course those people lacked the good sense to drive around the floods instead of into them, but just the same, keep the weather in mind as a factor. Maybe you should consider a parking garage, I believe there are several, for overall safty.

The Mississippi is hours away from Des Moines-check a map!

The best place to meet in Des Moines is in Chicago.

Mississippi river starts in the Minneapolis area and runs between MN and WI, and is entirely east of the whole state of Iowa.
So no fears of Mississippi flooding in Des Moines!!!

Enough of that.

Here's your best bet Tim.
I-80 runs east-west across the northern side of Des Moines.
I-80 turns south at the northwest part of the metro area. It is called I-80/35 at that point.
Just a couple miles south of the east-west/north-south bend in the interstate is an exit for University Avenue. This is actually an area called Clive, Iowa.
On the eastern side of the University/I-80/35 junction is a large commercial area with a big 8-ish story Holiday Inn on one side of the road, and on the other lots of hotels and restaurants like Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, McDonald's, Chili's etc etc.
This is a very safe, heavily travelled, well lit area with lots of activity, and easy to see and find from the interstate.
You could meet at the Holiday Inn by the front entrance, park the car there and leave it with no problem. It's only a block or so from the interstate.
Address is actually 1800 South 50th Street Des Moines.
Plug this address into www.mapblast.com and you'll have it all down.

The northern and eastern sides of Des Moines near the interstate are less safe than the part noted above, which is the safest part of town on I-35/80.

Well, wrong river then I supose, I wasn't driving and as I said it was years ago, but nonetheless, it was flooded and there was a river. I didn't think very highly of Iowa to begin with, so I never bothered to give it a second look on a map - I was just glad to be out of there, but feel free to hang me Toni. Next time I consider posting I'll simply shout "Check a map!".

Thank you so much Pam! Glad to see you didn't get mired in the Des Moines/Mississippi debate . My friends and I are very grateful to you~Tim

I live in Des Moines and I thoroughly agree with Pam.

yep that sounds like the perfect place