Mountains of Zhangjiajie (avatar)

This is the first time i've been online in over a week! I feel so disconnected. the boat trip was great, then we went to zhangjiajie(avatar), which was ridiculously cool! the mountains there are so amazing! it is like bryce canyon or monument valley, but covered in forests and rivers like humboldt(minus the big trees.) we stayed with a really nice family in t he park for a few days for super cheap, so that was great. We spent the last two days in a small village called Dehang, where only a few hundred people live. There are lots of trails and hikes to go on. one of the trails leads to the highest waterfall in china, somewhere around 500ft! so that was really cool, and once again we stayed with a family in a small guest house for super cheap! now we have a train from 2pm to 7am tomorrow, then another train from 1 to 7 to get to huang shan... which is supposed to be the most beautiful mtn in china! we will spend a couple days there, then go somewhere else! huang shan is semi close to shanghai, over by the east coast of china, and north of here. from there we will probably head back south to the Li River and the city of Guanli, or maybe somewhere else, then head over towards laos eventually. it has been raining, or more like misting for the past 3 days, so the clothes we washed 3 days ago are still wet and being dragged around strapped to the outside of my bag!Zhangjiajie was soooo cool! it has the most beautiful, cleanest mountain streams with beautiful lush forrests on both sides of them... then when you look up, there are 1000ft(some shorter, some taller) spires of rock shooting up all over. Some mountains are larger and more solid.... and some are just tall needle like mountains maybe 100 feet wide, and some only 50 feet wide. some are short and fat, some are tall and skinny... some are one tall point, some are many tiny points clumped together....all have trees and bushes growing on every flat spot and crack in the rock! it is really beautiful and unique. you start off at ground level, then eventually the trails break off, and you can choose to hike to the top(where everyone lives and the hotel(guest houses) are. The first trail we took to the top is literally stairs for 1.8kilometers straight(just about a mile), and well over 1500 stairs!.... it took over 2 hours of straight walking up stairs to get to the top!we paid someone 5 dollars to carry my bag(the heavier one) up the stairs and through the trails for us the first day, as we had only slept for about 3 hours on the "hard seat" train from Yichang and 3 gorges dam. I carried Jin's backpack, and Jin carried my day pack up the mountain! it was sooo tiring. after resting and walking around up top the rest of the day, and next morning, we took a bus on the top to another location, where we found another family to stay with, they were much nicer and had a much better view from their place. we hung out there for the afternoon and walked around the short trails there. The next morning(friday, i think!lol) we walked for 2 hours down another trail, as in 2 hours straight down steps! Then we walked around the bottom for a while again, then began the hike up on another trail, making a circle. The hike up was 4 straight hours of climbing steps!!!! it was soooo insane. then we got back to our hotel and went to bed around 8! we woke up and took our bags down on the gondola, which is the way most tourists get around in the park... The gondola was cool, but really expensive for china... 52 yuen a person, or 7.50 dollars.... our hotel was 40yuen a night for both of us to have a private room, bathroom with hot water, tv, and an out of this world view!We left the park and headed to Dehang, then chilled in the tiny village for the last couple days and relaxed and went on easy hikes through the mountains and checking out the beautiful scenery! it was sooo nice, and very relaxing. So now we have a day and half of travel to get to huang shan, then another giant mtn of steps to climb to get to the top. And that is about it for our plans for now.