I've managed to bunny hop my roadbike back over the edge before but generally speaking it is indeed safer to just roll it out and then place the bike back onto the road/path by lifting it back on there instead of attempting to ride it back on. I'm glad you came out of the crash okay.
This reminds me of a crash that happened to me a couple of years ago when the owner of my favourite bike shop and I were riding along at about 20MPH and he was checking out houses that were for sale (he was also big into real-estate). The next thing I know, he drifts right into me, slams up against me and as I'm fighting to retain control, he slides back along the side of me and goes down as his front wheel touches and wipes out my rear. This also caused me to go down and we went skidding across the road and ended up on the opposite side in a ditch. I ended up about 15 feet in front of him with my bike a couple of feet behind me. I took stock of my condition, decided I was okay and then looked behind me. I didn't see anyone or anything so I yelled out, "Phil, you okay?" Suddenly his head poked up out from the brush and he responded with, "Yeah, I'm fine... you?"
His bike received a little more damage than mine. I only lost a bar plug and ripped a little bit of tape at the end of the drops. His saddle was fairly torn up and his shifters were all scraped up. All of our wheels remained true though. We both had some nasty road rash however.