Peter, greetings!

Corrections in red; stylistics in blue.

Notes of an Outsider (7)

The eighth day.

The fact that you are in Nevada you can easily determine by entering into any hotel. The first floor is undoubtedly/surely occupied by a casino. Having passed by the casino, I understood that I'm not a gambler. I hadn't felt/had any desire to pull the handle of a "one-armed bandit". The next place we had planned to visit was Death Valley, California. We were told later that were lucky. The temperature was only 35 degrees Celsius, so we didn't suffered much from the heat. On the way to Death Valley, I had been realized that American military personnel generally, and jet pilots in particular, have a sense of humour. When I drove along the road, suddenly something literally [1] crashed above the car's roof. I almost drove into a ditch from the unexpectedness of it. Then I thought that our car was falling to pieces, and just a second later I saw two jets flying away. Having driven a little more, we saw a sign on which it was written that Death Valley was an active training ground for pilots flying aircraft very close to the ground. The Valley has educational significance mostly (in my humble opinion, sorry), but you can see something beautiful in that place nevertheless. We had gone along a salt-covered road in the lowest place in the USA - Badwater Basin; and we had the luck to see the so-called "Rainbow Cloud," which is a quite rare phenomenon. One episode had amazed me to the bottom of my heart. When we stood in the viewpoint in a place of a seemingly extraterrestrial landscape, a mini-van drove by near us. Two young men got out and helped an elderly/old man of about 90 years to exit the min-van. He walked towards the Valley, and the young men supported him. I began right away to respect the man who, despite his advanced age, hadn't lost his curiosity and interest to life.

[1]  "Literally" is a funny word.  The historical meaning of the word is "word for word; truly, in fact; NOT figuratively".  So when you say "something literally crashed above the car's roof," it could mean that the jet really had an accident just above your car!  HOWEVER, in recent times, people have started to use "literally" as an intensifier before a figurative expression.  That's the way you used it.  The jet really didn't crash.  Instead, you used "literally" as an intensifier because it seemed as if the jet crashed.