Our next day in SLO took us to Montana de Oro State Park, which is free to park in. We started by the Oats Peak trail and the campground. The trail is for hikers and bikers. It’s a beautiful green trail with beautiful flowers, but LOTS of poison oak! So be careful where you pee. The uphill is gradual switchbacks until you come to Oats Peak, which has a giant hill before as a false summit before you get to Oats Peak. Oats Peak has a marker to take pictures of and is about 5.5 miles from the start.  After Oats Peak, the trail to Alan Peak is all overgrown so poles and long shirts/pants are necessary for this trail. Again, there is so much poison oak that we should of brought a change of clothes. We saw one garden snake so be careful in the high brush for the snakes. We finally reached Alan Peak after 3 miles of endless uphill. When we returned to Oats Peak, we took another trail to the creek, which was worse overgrowth than Alan Peak’s trail and steep. Once you get down to Coon’s Creek trail, it’s all flat passing 6 bridges across the creek. We got back to the main road and walked back to the car another mile. This loop didn’t save us any mileage, but we thought it would be easier. We covered our car in plastic bags to sit on until we could take showers and wash clothes to get the poison oak off. Overall, it was a long hiking day! The weather was all overcast and dewy which was the only type of day I would suggest to do this 16 mile hike!