Sunstones are much more valuable and rare than moonstone. It's easy to do an Internet search to see how different a stone one is from the other.
There are several very good places to fee dig for sunstones (all in south central Oregon) all situated very near a free/public rockhound set-aside area. As you may suspect, if you've been a rockhound for very long, the fee dig spots are much more likely to provide high quality results in a reasonable time frame. But, you surely can find worthwhile stones on the public dig area, too.
As mentioned in Special Skills Needed, persistence is the key to finding sunstones. You may find one of the very highest quality simply sitting on the surface after the wind moves the sand about, but thank the rock gods, if you do. It's a gift... Usually, it takes all day and many five gallon buckets worth of sifted gravel, busting up basalt "clods", and skin that matches that of stirring wet cement all day with your bare hands (wear good gloves!!).
Your most useful tool, other than the required shovel and a couple pairs of leather gloves, is a shaker screen (half down to quarter inch mesh) on rollers set at belly height, on a wooden frame. The pay sites usually provide this tool and even shovels and buckets like as not. It's their business (their life, really...) and they want you to be successful and happy to return again. They have all been, to my experience, folks of the highest degree of honesty, integrity, and friendliness. I look forward to meeting with them each year I can return. You either pay up front for the day, keep all you find, or you pay a very fair fee (far less than retail and with wastage calculated in) for what you want to keep. You can often also arrange to stay on-site at the fee dig locations as the closest place for motels is Lakeview, a long drive back after a hard day of working the rock. Or, you can find a few trailer spaces in Adel, south of Plush. Have fun!

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