I think that Sal doesn't have an end of the road in mind. At first, he thought it was San Francisco and meeting up with all his pals in Denver and later meeting with Remi, but he wasn't happy settling down like that even thougth it was in the west that he wanted to see so badly. He says at the end that he had gone as far west as he could and there was nowhere left to go, but circle back.I think he likes being "on the road" and that his goal is to see as much as he can. This also relates to the Transcendentalist idea of experiencing rather than hearing it from other people. I also thought this whole part was weird, because the whole beginning of the book, he'd been traveling and then all of a sudden he's stuck in this life with a job he obviously hates, and stealing. It was almost like it was a little break in the story. i just thought it was weird. anyway, i have two minutes left to finish this post, he says at the end of chapter 11, "There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded-at least that's what i thought then"(79). i think he starts to regret going off on the trip and thinks that the West really isn't all that different or better than the East.