We made it!  And unlike James Dean we didn’t have any Highway 46 crack-ups. Claire and I completed the driving part of our cross-country tour (both the width and the length portions) on Sunday – the 17th day of our journey – when we pulled into Claremont around 7:30 local time.  We’ve put approximately 4,500 miles on the rental car and have been through 13 states. I’ll write more about this segment of our travels later, but I did want to capture one bit of Americana from Sunday’s drive.  As we were tooling down California Highway 46 between Paso Robles and Lost Hills, we passed The James Dean Memorial Junction.  Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if this is where James Dean died in his car crash. Sure enough, a couple of miles down the road we came to a store and gas station with a huge likeness of the famous 1950s actor pointing to the entrance. The Atlas Obscura (who knew such a thing existed), provides this background for the junction: The California junction of …