Or hell, if Tess is wanting to build contacts, she might be able to get Joel to go simply based on that. The whole "we need to work out who is useful, who to avoid, who we could exploit, who's who of what, for survival purposes" thing. I mean, Joel would normally leave building contacts up to Tess while he does most of the muscle work, but this is a whole new environment where guns don't work, and safety in numbers is probably a good strategy. Plus, who knows, Joel might need to intervene if Tess got too reckless or something, lol.