FARGO - Former Lt. Gov. Rosemarie Myrdal crawled on her elbows for about a quarter-mile before she was rescued after falling on the ice near her rural Edinburg home.

"You know, you can travel that way," Myrdal said by phone Thursday from her room at the Altru Rehabilitation Center in Grand Forks. Still, she said, "It's not fun dragging a broken leg."

Myrdal, 77, a former legislator and North Dakota's lieutenant governor from 1993 to 2000, said she broke a bone just below her right hip and broke her right wrist after falling Saturday morning while walking to her son's house about a half-mile away.

"Actually the pain wasn't too bad," she said. "I suppose I was cold. But I was very intent on being found … and I was very grateful when I was found. But I didn't think of pain of being any particular issue."

Myrdal said "she should have known better" than to go for a walk, but could not resist a warm winter morning after a coat of fresh snow. She said she was watching a flock of wild turkeys when she slipped and fell "completely flat out" on the ice.

"I just didn't pay attention to the ice for a minute … and there you go," she said.

The accident happened about 7:30 a.m. She first dragged herself to a mailbox to meet the mail carrier. After realizing that it would be a long wait, she decided to crawl toward her son Mark's house, which was nearby.

She said she was almost there when a farm worker spotted her about 9:30 a.m. Her sons drove her to the hospital in Park River, and she was transferred by ambulance to Altru Health Center in Grand Forks. She had surgery last Sunday on her leg, when a pin was inserted, and has a cast on her wrist, she said.

Myrdal said she has been overwhelmed by cards, flowers, phone calls and personal visits.

"I'm really touched by all these people who have contacted me and visited me," she said. "I'm ever grateful to my family and friends and being in North Dakota where we have wonderful health care facilities."

Myrdal is expected to continue rehabilitation until at least Sunday, when she hopes to transfer back to the Park River hospital. In the meantime, she said, physical therapists are keeping her "really busy doing positive and good things."

"I have a pretty complicated limitation of movements," she said. "You use the right side of your body a lot, I've found out."