Amycles - Oh, what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak

The quest for the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amycles began as we were returning from Taenaron.  We found Vapheio without much fuss (a short detour), but Amycles was a mystery.  I saw a sign.  The Atlas says it should be somewhere around here.  Google maps puts it over there.  Waze is useless.  We drove up and down the main road south of Sparta at least 4 times in wider and wider fields.  Finally, we stopped for dinner around 7pm.  I brought in the Atlas and searched some more on my iPhone with Google maps, and the satellite views.

Finally, I found it.  As the light and our stamina were fading, I told Randall, "if it is not here, I will stop for today."  We drove confidently onto some somewhat paved road which led into some back village and a series of specious turns between homes, and finally were confronted with a steep (30º) chromatodromos that even I said no.  "Well, it's supposed to be 850km to the east around that building," I said.  Randall offered to have me reroute, but as we were still over 2 hours from home, I demurred.  We will try again tomorrow.

That night, I found the new inroad through the small village of Peristeri, and was ready for day two.

After a short delay to a really easy-to-find archaeological site in Sparta (see Psychiko), we drove the 10km south from Sparta, turned left and drove east.  And there it was!  A Level 4, completely enclosed by chain link and 2 gates!!!

As with our other fenced sites, we surveyed the outside terrain, complete with path, but it had not been breached.  Sure there was a small man-made hole the size of a small child (or a wild boar) at one of the posts, but that was not enough.  The tops of the chain link which otherwise stuck up had been pushed over to create a smoother approach in one segment, but they were still too much for clothes.  Randall remarked, "if only we had mat."  "We have the floor mats of the car!" I suggested.  As we recollected later on the experience, this led to a number of movie references, including the title of this post.

Now, I won't say that we did anything more with the car mat than this:

And while Randall went to procure said floor mat from the car, I may have examined some of the larger rocks in the area for their archaeological use elsewhere.

And of course with the Delta upgrade to our iPhone 7 for the drone app that takes no aerial video but only eye-level photos, I was able to procure the following photographs of the interior of the archaeological site:

The structure was huge and hexagonal!

This is a newly reconstructed column as of this year!

Circular altar

FYI, this was the sign we saw for the site as we were leaving in broad daylight and which was only facing in the opposite direction.  No wonder it took us so long to find the place...