There s also Greyhound, which has a limited bus stop in SLO. (San Francisco, Oakland, Hayward, San Jose, etc.) Leaves SF at 10:15 pm, no changes. 6.5 hours from SF. That s enough time to get to SF from the airport, find the station, have a nice dinner, and catch the bus.
You can take BART to the Millbrae station ; Take Caltrain to the San Jose station; Transfer to Amtrak train and/or bus to San Luis Obispo. Since it s a weekend you might consider changing your flight if at all possible. Other wise you ll be waiting in San Jose for hours on end, as the next, and last bus, leave from the San jose station at 11:59pm; arriving San Luis Obispo at 3:55am. You may consider staying the night in San Jose. It is possible, but easier if you coordinate you flight time. I don t know your where your coming from or what airlines are available to you, but maybe flights to San Jose or Oakland might open up some doors.Good luck
You can take BART from SFO to the Richmond station, which is a combined BART and Amtrak station. There, you can connect to a train.I m looking at the Amtrak website, and it looks like you would have to take Amtrak to another station in the South Bay, then take an Amtrak bus to SLO. The latest trip would leave Richmond at 8:35 (you should be able to make that) and arrives in SLO at 3:55 AM.If you could stay the night somewhere, and somehow get to San Jose, you could take the Coast Starlight train directly from San Jose to SLO, starting at 10:07 AM and arriving at 3:07 PM. You can take Caltrain from somewhere near the airport to San Jose the night before, and stay at a hotel near the train station. It looks like you can take BART from SFO to the Milbrae station, which is also a Caltrain station. If I were you this is what I would do.
you best bet is either to fly or drive. Bart to SLO takes a long time. It is about a 4 hour drive from San Francisco to SLO via highway 101 south.Flying is horrendously expensive as SLO has a very tiny airport. Will run anywhere from $250 - 700 one way.As far as Amtrak, the only one that goes that way is the coast starlight. YOu are going to need to take bart to either the San Francisco Embarcadero to get to the Ferry Building or over to Oakland, Coliseum. There is no real direct route in the evenings from the bay area to SLO. That said, the train is a minimum of 7 - 9 hours depending on how you go.
The Amtrak website shows nine links in San Francisco - some of them appear to be bus links to the main station. Check that website again.You could also rent a car, but going south on the PCH isn t for the faint-of-heart and going down on I-5 would miss all that beautiful scenery!
Get a connecting flight to SLO or whatever the nearest airport is. If you try to go any other way it will take hours to get to SLO except a rental car from San Jose airport.