Obviously my Alaskan voyage was just that, since there's few other ways to see some of the glaciers, and admittedly no other (practical) way to chug up some of the watery "arms" around the Inland Passage. Due to the volume of floating ice in the usual Tracy Arm journey, the ship's captain took us down Endicott Arm and toward Dawes Glacier -- a far longer journey, and probably with a bit more to see as well.
Traveling from the Inland Passage channel into and along Endicott Arm, the landscape changes somewhat, and floating ice begins to pepper the path ahead (which we obviously sailed around as part of the route; I guess even our Italian captain has seen Ttianic.)
The green tint to the water is due to the amount of rocks and minerals that is suspended in the glacial water -- which is sligthtly different than glacier water, which is said to be perfectly clear.
The dark "roads" in the glacier are actually the sediment scraped by the glacier as it meets soil, and when two glaciers merge, those edges are no longer edges... the technical term is a "medial moraine." (And those bumps in the water are floating ice, likely why we didn't sail too much closer than we did.)