Summer Camp Bridges the Generations : Lifestyle: Illinois venture pairs grandparents with grandchildren for a week of hiking, swimming, exploring and getting better acquainted.

For one precious week, Margaret Amberg hiked, swam and explored the forests of southern Illinois with her 11-year-old granddaughter, Katie.

There were no worried parents, no rigid schedules.

“This is an important time in her life growing up,” Amberg, who lives in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said recently as she watched the girl scamper away on a rickety wooden bridge. “She’s been a little girl, and it’s not going to last much longer.”

“I’m used to seeing my parents all the time and not my grandma, so I like to spend more time with her,” said Katie Amberg, who lives in Anaconda, Mont.

The Ambergs were among 54 older people and their grandchildren at a camp organized by Elderhostel to bring the two age groups together. The Boston-based Elderhostel sponsors activities for older people around the country.

Besides bringing families closer together, organizers hope that the program inspired an appreciation of nature. Some, like young Daniel Ziluca, who lives in a New York City suburb, hadn’t spent much time in the woods before.

“Well, there’s not much of this in New York,” Ziluca said while admiring Heron Pond’s towering cypress trees and moss-covered swamp with his grandmother, Samantha Monheit, who lives in Southern California.

It was the first time the two had spent much time together without other family members around.

“This is a neutral zone, a zone to share and experience and have fun without any other pressures,” said Curtis Carter of Southern Illinois University’s Touch of Nature environmental center, where the group stayed and played.

Not all of the children live far from their grandparents, but that hasn’t made the experience less meaningful. Chris Fletcher, 11, of Waukegan came with his grandmother from Rockford.

“We see each other more often than most grandparents and grandchildren do, but you know we’ve never really had any quality time, when it’s just the two of us,” Chris said.

While the families got accustomed to the sights and sounds of the outdoors, they slept in a lodge. Later in the week, they had the option of camping under the stars.

Jean Smith of Burlington, Wis., said early in the camp that the short time she’d spent with her 10-year-old grandson so far had made a big impact. The boy lives only about five miles from her home, and they see each other about once a week.

“He’s more at ease with me. We’re just having a good time, a closer feeling, which is what I wanted,” Smith said.

And for Gene Lyons, a Cornell, Ill., farmer, it was hard to tell who was having a better time: Lyons or his two grandchildren.

“I’m going to have fun watching Granddad and Grandma teach the kids how to canoe,” he said with a chuckle.

The camp costs $290 per adult and $225 per child between the ages of 9 and 13.